Quammen, David

"Breathless is the story of SARS-CoV-2 and its fierce journey through the human population, as seen by the scientists who study its origin, its ever-changing nature, and its capacity to kill us. David Quammen expertly shows how strange new viruses emerge from animals into humans as we disrupt wild ecosystems, and how those viruses adapt to their human hosts, sometimes causing global catastrophe. He explains why this coronavirus will probably be a 'forever virus,' destined to circulate among humans and bedevil us endlessly, in one variant form or another. As scientists labor to catch it, comprehend it, and control it, with their high-tech tools and methods, the virus finds ways of escape. Based on interviews with nearly one hundred scientists, including leading virologists in China and around the world, Quammen explains that: Infectious disease experts saw this pandemic coming; Some scientists, for more than two decades, warned that 'the next big one' could be caused by a changeable new virus--very possibly a coronavirus--but such warnings were ignored for political or economic reasons; The precise origins of this virus may not be known for years, but some clues are compelling, and some suppositions can be dismissed; And much more. Breathless takes you inside the frantic international effort to understand and control SARS-CoV-2 as if we were peering over the shoulders of the brilliant scientists who led the chase"--From the publisher's web site.

"In The Tangled Tree David Quammen," one of that rare breed of science journalists who blends exploration with a talent for synthesis and storytelling" (Nature), chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them--such as Carl Woese, the most important little-known biologist of the twentieth century; Lynn Margulis, the notorious maverick whose wild ideas about "mosaic" creatures proved to be true; and Tsutomu Wantanabe, who discovered that the scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a direct result of horizontal gene transfer, bringing the deep study of genome histories to bear on a global crisis in public health"--Jacket flap.

For millennia, lions, tigers, and their man-eating kin have kept our dark, scary forests dark and scary, and their predatory majesty has been the stuff of folklore. But by the year 2150 big predators may only exist on the other side of glass barriers and chain-link fences. Their gradual disappearance is changing the very nature of our existence. We no longer occupy an intermediate position on the food chain; instead we survey it invulnerably from above?so far above that we are in danger of forgetting that we even belong to an ecosystem..

"Science writer and explorer David Quammen first came near the Ebola virus while he was traveling in the jungles of Gabon, accompanied by local men whose village had been devastated by a recent outbreak. Here he tells the story of Ebola -- its past, present, and its unknowable future."--OCLC.

Noting that island ecosystems have always suffered high rates of extinction and that human activity increasingly carves the landscape into island-like fragments, David Quammen examines the conditions in many island ecosystems around the world.

A collection of twenty science and nature essays originally published in magazines and periodicals in 1999, selected for inclusion by guest editor David Quammen, with contributors' notes, and a list of one hundred additional distinguished articles of 1999.

Examines the life and works of Charles Darwin beginning after his five-year, around the world trip on the survey ship "Beagle," and focuses on the factors that led to his work on the "Origin of the Species.".

Explores the mysteries and patterns of the natural world with perception and beauty.