Omaha Live – Nancy Szokan 
If you read about children’s health, you’ve heard a lot of this before: Microbes, vilified because they cause infectious diseases, can be beneficial to a child’s well-being. Our society’s penchant for hypercleanliness is actually making our children less healthy and more prone to allergies. But microbiologists B. Brett Findlay and Marie-Claire Arrieta make that case with an unusually convincing display of evidence — as well as historical anecdotes and a parent-friendly sense of humor — in their new book, “Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World.” They lay out the 19th-century discoveries that identified microbes — germs! — as dangerous carriers of diseases, and the discoveries of the past two decades that have shown us how vital microbes are to our very existence. Then they translate that evidence into accessible, understandable advice.(more)