Carl Zimmer

Award-winning writer, columnist, and journalists Carl Zimmer selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in 2022.

"Viruses are the smallest living things known to science, and yet they hold the entire planet in their sway. We're most familiar with the viruses that give us colds or Covid-19. But viruses also cause a vast range of other diseases, including one disorder that makes people sprout branch-like growths as if they were trees. Viruses have been a part of our lives for so long that we are actually part virus: the human genome contains more DNA from viruses...

"We all assume we know what life is, but the more scientists learn about the living world-from protocells to brains, from zygotes to pandemic viruses-the harder they find it is to locate life's edge"--

"Award-winning writer Carl Zimmer takes us on a fantastic voyage into the secret parasite universe we actually live in but haven't recognized. He reveals not only that parasites are the most successful life-forms on Earth, but that they triggered the development of sex, shape ecosystems, and have driven the engine of evolution." "In mapping the parasite universe, Zimmer makes the astonishing observation that most species are parasites, and that almost...

This volume introduces the incredible animals that populated the planet before the Age of the Dinosaurs. Readers voyage to a time, beginning about 370 million yesrs ago, when the first four-footed vertebrates appeared, and ending 200 million years later at the moment when the dinosaurs begin to dominate the animal kingdom.