Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe
Feb 2025 · Pan Macmillan
Ebook
496
Pages
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Eligible
info
infoThis book will become available on February 27, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
"An extraordinary history of the perils and promise of every breath we take" James Nestor, New York Times bestselling author of Breath
"Another brilliant work from one of the very best science writers, Air-Borne will leave you agog at the incredible world that floats unseen around us" Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World
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Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air – and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life.
In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and Baillie Gifford-shortlisted author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments, and meet NASA scientists who send balloons even higher, to search for life in the stratosphere.
Zimmer chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of biological weapons designed to spread anthrax and smallpox. Air-Borne prompts us to look at the world with new eyes – as a place where the oceans and forests loft trillions of cells into the air, where microbes eat clouds, and where life soars thousands of miles on the wind.
Weaving together spellbinding history with the latest reporting on airborne threats to global health, this masterwork makes visible an invisible world.
"Another brilliant work from one of the very best science writers, Air-Borne will leave you agog at the incredible world that floats unseen around us" Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World
--------------------------------------
Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air – and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life.
In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and Baillie Gifford-shortlisted author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments, and meet NASA scientists who send balloons even higher, to search for life in the stratosphere.
Zimmer chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of biological weapons designed to spread anthrax and smallpox. Air-Borne prompts us to look at the world with new eyes – as a place where the oceans and forests loft trillions of cells into the air, where microbes eat clouds, and where life soars thousands of miles on the wind.
Weaving together spellbinding history with the latest reporting on airborne threats to global health, this masterwork makes visible an invisible world.
About the author
Carl Zimmer writes the “Origins” column for The New York Times and has frequently contributed to The Atlantic, National Geographic, Time, and Scientific American. His journalism has earned numerous awards, including ones from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering. Zimmer is professor adjunct at Yale, where he teaches writing. He is the author of numerous books about science, including She Has Her Mother’s Laugh, which was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, and, most recently, Air-Borne.
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