Inflammation is the body’s ancestral response to its greatest threats, the first line of defense it deploys against injury and foreign pathogens. But as the threats we face have evolved, new science is uncovering how inflammation may also turn against us, simmering underneath the surface of leading killers from heart disease and cancer to depression, aging, and mysterious autoimmune conditions.

In A Silent Fire, gastroenterologist Shilpa Ravella investigates hidden inflammation’s emerging role as a common root of modern disease—and how we can control it. We meet the visionary nineteenth-century pathologist who laid the foundation for our modern understanding of inflammation, the eccentric Russian zoologist who discovered one of the cells central to our immune system, and the dedicated researchers advancing the frontiers of medical and nutritional science today. With fascinating case studies, Ravella reveals how we can reform our relationships with food and our microbiomes to benefit our own health and the planet’s.