Join Carl Zimmer for a discussion of his new book, Air-Borne, where he takes readers on a journey through the living atmosphere and the history of its discovery. From the glaciers where Louis Pasteur first encountered airborne germs to the groundbreaking experiments of Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, Zimmer also introduces forgotten pioneers like William and Mildred Wells, who warned about airborne infections. The book delves into the darker side of aerobiology, uncovering the covert development of airborne biological weapons by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Ultimately, Air-Borne invites readers to see the world in a new light, showing how oceans, forests, and microbes fill the air with trillions of cells and how life travels across vast distances on the wind.
Carl Zimmer is the author of fifteen books on science, with his latest being Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe. He writes the “Origins” column for The New York Times and has received numerous awards for his work, including the Stephen Jay Gould Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution. Zimmer contributed to the New York Times coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic, which won the 2021 Public Service Pulitzer Prize. Three of his books have been named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, and his book She Has Her Mother’s Laugh won the 2019 National Academies Communication Award and was named the best science book of 2018 by The Guardian. Zimmer is also a frequent guest on radio programs such as Radiolab and serves as an adjunct professor at Yale University. He is, to his knowledge, the only writer to have both a species of tapeworm and an asteroid named after him.
Copies of Air-Borne will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Breakwater Books.
This program is free and open to all.
Please register.