What did we lose when we lost the dirt?
For most of human history, children grew up in and around soil — barefoot, outdoors, in daily contact with the microbes of the natural world. In a few short generations that world has largely vanished, replaced by sealed homes, sterile surfaces and screens. Something has changed in our children's bodies as a result.
Following the trail from the backyard to the laboratory, *Raised on Dirt* explores the emerging science of immune development, the hygiene hypothesis and the childhood microbiome to ask a deceptively simple question: what do children actually need in order to grow up healthy? Blending research with a plain-spoken argument, Mayank Chaudhary makes the case that soil, sunlight and bare feet are not nostalgia — they are biology.
Part science, part quiet manifesto, this is a book for anyone who suspects that in making childhood safer, we may have made it poorer.