New Releases by David Quammen

In this "frightening and fascinating masterpiece" (Walter Isaacson), David Quammen explores the true origins of HIV/AIDS. 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 hair-raising investigation tracks the virus from chimp populations in the jungles of southeastern Cameroon to laboratories across the globe, as he unravels the mysteries of when, where, and under what circumstances such a consequential "spillover" can happen. An audacious search for answers amid more than a century of data, The Chimp and the River tells the haunting tale of one of the most devastating pandemics of our time.

In this "frightening and fascinating masterpiece" (Walter Isaacson), David Quammen explores the true origins of HIV/AIDS. 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 hair-raising investigation tracks the virus from chimp populations in the jungles of southeastern Cameroon to laboratories across the globe, as he unravels the mysteries of when, where, and under what circumstances such a consequential "spillover" can happen. An audacious search for answers amid more than a century of data, The Chimp and the River tells the haunting tale of one of the most devastating pandemics of our time.

In Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, award-winning journalist David Quammen reminds us why he has become one of our most beloved science and nature writers. This collection of twenty-three of Quammen''s most intriguing, most exciting, most memorable pieces introduces 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. Readers learn of the commerce in pearls (and black-market parrots) in the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia. Quammen even finds wildness in smog-choked Los Angeles -- embodied in an elusive population of urban coyotes, too stubborn and too clever to surrender to the sprawl of civilization. With humor and intelligence, David Quammen''s Wild Thoughts from Wild Places also reminds us that humans are just one of the many species on earth with motivations, goals, quirks, and eccentricities. Expect to be entertained and moved on this journey through the wilds of science and nature.

A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerginghuman diseases.

Reisverslag van de 5 jaar durende zeereis die de Britse wetenschapper Charles Darwin vanaf 1831 maakte naar Zuid-Amerika, Afrika, Australië en eilanden in de Stille en Indische Oceaan.

"David Quammen is simply the best natural essayist working today."--Tim Cahill, author of Lost in My Own Backyard "Lively writing about science and nature depends less on the offering of good answers, I think, than on the offering of good questions," said David Quammen in the original introduction to Natural Acts. For more than two decades, he has stuck to that credo. In this updated version of curiosity leads him from New Mexico to Romania, from the Congo to the Amazon, asking questions about mosquitoes (what are their redeeming merits?), dinosaurs (how did they change the life of a dyslexic Vietnam vet?), and cloning (can it save endangered species?). This revised and expanded edition best-loved "Natural Acts" columns, which first appeared in Outside magazine in the early 1980s, and includes recent pieces such as "Planet of Weeds," an influential new Natural Acts is an eye-opening journey that will please both Quammen fans and newcomers to his work.

This work is a revised and expanded edition of Quammen''s first book of nonfiction, and reprints some of his best-loved "Natural Acts" columns, which first appeared in "Outside" magazine in the early 1980s.

Originally published: New York: W.W. Norton, 2006; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007.

21 years passed between Charles Darwim''s epiphany that ''natural selection'' formed the basis of evolution and the scientist''s publication of ''On the Origin of Species''. This text looks at why Darwin delayed the publication and examines what happened during the course of those two decades.

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. Casting his expert eye over the rapidly diminishing areas of wilderness where predators still reign, the award-winning author of The Song of the Dodo examines the fate of lions in India''s Gir forest, of saltwater crocodiles in northern Australia, of brown bears in the mountains of Romania, and of Siberian tigers in the Russian Far East. In the poignant and troublesome ferocity of these embattled creatures, we recognize something primeval deep within us, something in danger of vanishing forever.

This richly illustrated volume is the first to offer a comprehensive overview of Rockman''s oeuvre, from his early works, such as the fascinating yet disquieting Aviary, in which birds perch against a blood-red sky, to his more recent Expedition series, inspired by the artist''s field studies in the rain forests of Brazil and Guyana.

In 1981 David Quammen began what might be every freelance writer''s dream: a monthly column for Outside magazine in which he was given free rein to write about anything that interested him in the natural world. His column was called "Natural Acts," and for the next fifteen years he delighted Outside''s readers with his fascinating ruminations on the world around us. The Boilerplate Rhino brings together twenty-six of Quammen''s most thoughtful and engaging essays from that column, none previously printed in any of his earlier books. In lucid, penetrating, and often quirkily idiosyncratic prose, David Quammen takes his readers with him as he explores the world. His travels lead him to rattlesnake handlers in Texas; a lizard specialist in Baja; the dinosaur museum in Jordan, Montana; and halfway across Indonesia in search of the perfect Durian fruit. He ponders the history of nutmeg in the southern Moluccas, meditates on bioluminescent beetles while soaking in the waters of the Amazon, and delivers "The Dope on Eggs" from a chicken ranch near his hometown in Montana. Quammen''s travels are always jumping-off points to explore the rich and sometimes horrifying tension between humankind and the natural world, in all its complexity and ambivalence. The result is another irrepressible assortment of ideas to explore, conundrums to contemplate, and wondrous creatures to behold.

Vols. for - edited by Elizabeth Kolbert.

The author brings to life the weird and wonderful pageant of nature in essays ranging from tales of vegetarian piranha to dogs without voices.

Recent research on island biodiversity gives warning of how the Yellowstone grizzly could go the way of the dodo.

When journalist Michael Kessler investigates the brutal murder of an old friend, the writer becomes involved in a deadly twenty-year-old secret

The murder of a young man sets off a frantic, desperate search for copies of Edward Teller''s top-secret plans for the hydrogen bomb, a search that involves an unusual and dangerous group of people

Over the past eight years, David Quammen has followed the threads of island biogeography on a globe-encircling journey of discovery.