Airborne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe.
Saturday, June 21, 3 pm in the Keyes Gallery
Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Breakwater Books.
Refreshments will be served.
Call to register 203.488.8702
About the book 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. This last great biological frontier remains so mysterious that it took over two years for scientists to finally agree that the Covid pandemic was caused by an airborne virus.
In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We travel to the tops of mountain glaciers, where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air, and follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments. We meet the long-forgotten pioneers of aerobiology including William and Mildred Wells, who tried for decades to warn the world about airborne infections, only to die in obscurity.
Air-Borne chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of airborne biological weapons designed to spread anthrax, smallpox, and an array of other pathogens. Air-Borne also leaves readers looking 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 gripping history with the latest reporting on Covid and other threats to global health, Air-Borne surprises us on every page as it reveals the hidden world of the air.
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. He has won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science Journalism Award three times, among a host of other awards and fellowships. He teaches science writing at Yale, has been a guest on NPR’s RadioLab, Science Friday, and Fresh Air, and maintains an international speaking schedule. He is the author of thirteen books about science.
Take a Deep Breath. If You Dare. In “Air-Borne,” his detailed and gripping account of aerobiology, Carl Zimmer uncovers the mysteries filling our lungs… “The Covid‑19 pandemic made the ocean of gases surrounding us visible,” Zimmer writes. “Air-Borne” shows us the ways seeing where we live means listening deeply — and being prepared to see what’s perhaps never been seen.— The New York Times
"Astonishing...From airborne espionage and bioweapons to our latest understanding of COVID, Zimmer aims to lead readers on an exciting, surprising and eye-opening journey into the atmosphere." —Scientific American
“Air-Borne is a fascinating story of the evolution of a highly interdisciplinary field over centuries…it presents both a birds-eye and a microscopic view of life in the atmosphere and its profound effects on humans.” —Nature
“New York Times science columnist Zimmer (Life’s Edge) delivers an invigorating chronicle of how humanity’s understanding of airborne microbes has evolved from the 19th century through the Covid pandemic…This astute history of the scientific debates that shaped the Covid crisis will take readers’ breath away.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A Tilde Cafe event in collaboration with the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.
