David Quammen

Examines the emergence and causes of new diseases all over the world, describing a process called "spillover" where illness originates in wild animals before being passed to humans and discusses the potential for the next huge pandemic. The author illuminates the dynamics of Ebola, SARS, bird flu, Lyme disease, and other emerging threats and tells the story of AIDS and its origins as it has never before been told.

"In this essay collection, David Quammen journeys to places where civilization meets raw nature"--

In this inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed author David Quammen journeys to places where civilization meets raw nature and explores the challenge of balancing the needs of both. For more than two decades, award-winning science and nature writer David Quammen has traveled to Earth's most far-flung and fragile destinations, sending back field notes from places caught in the tension between humans and the wild. This illuminating book features...

In September 1838, a young Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that natural selection among competing individuals would lead to wondrous adaptations and species diversity. Twenty-one years passed between that epiphany and publication of On the Origin of Species. The human drama and scientific basis of that time constitute a fascinating, tangled tale that illuminates this cautious naturalist who sparked an intellectual revolution. Drawing...

"Few books have had such a sweeping effect on science, politics, and society that they can truly be said to have changed the world. Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species is one of those books. The controversies it generated when it was first published in 1859 continue unabated today. Perhaps no other book - and no author - has been so controversial. This new edition of Darwin's masterwork, edited and introduced by award-winning science journalist...

"The real story of AIDS--how it originated with a virus in a chimpanzee, jumped to one human, and then infected more than 60 million people--is very different from what most of us think we know. Recent research has revealed dark surprises and yielded a radically new scenario of how AIDS began and spread. Excerpted and adapted from the book Spillover, with a new introduction by the author, Quammen's ... investigation tracks the virus from chimp populations...

For the past two decades, David Quammen has followed winding trails and fresh lines of thought through the world's outback. This book is a collection of twenty-three of Quammen's most intriguing, most exciting, most memorable pieces. In it you will meet seasoned professional kayakers on the Futaleufu River of southern Chile, where Quammen describes how it feels to travel in fast company and flail for survival in the river's maw. You will be introduced...

Through 200 revelatory images, award-winning photographer Robert Clark makes one of the most important foundations of science clear and exciting to everyone. Evolution: A Visual Record transports readers from the near-mystical (human ancestors) to the historic (the famous 'finches' Darwin collected on the Galápagos Islands that spurred his theory); the recently understood (the link between dinosaurs and modern birds) to the simply astonishing.--