Happy news! She Has Her Mother's Laugh won the 2019 Communications Award from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. You can read about all this year's winners here.
Here Comes The Third Edition
Different kinds of writing bring different pleasures. Over the years, I've published two textbooks about evolution: The Tangled Bank (for non-majors) and Evolution: Making Sense of Life (for majors, co-authored with biologist Doug Emlen). In both cases, I've relished the challenge of writing a textbook that students would actually want to read, rather than have to read. That's hard, but it's made a little easier by the fact that textbook publishing allows for do-overs. As you go from one edition to the next, you have the chance to rework old material and bring a book up to date with new research.
Doug and I are now very pleased to present the third edition of Evolution, hot off the presses. The front and back covers feature the snowshoe hare, both as an example of adaptation and--in an age of rapid climate change--maladaptation.
Inside, we have improved explanations of important concepts in evolutionary biology and have revised a number of chapters. For example, my reporting on human evolution in recent years made me appreciate just how much of our old understanding of our origins has been overwritten by new discoveries--both by fossils of previously unknown species and by chunks of our DNA that record a complex past.
This is our first new edition of Evolution since our original publisher was acquired by Macmillan. That move has enabled us to offer more resources online, including a series of videos shot by Doug. You can find out more about it here. Both books are also available at fine booksellers such as Amazon (Tangled Bank, Evolution).
Here are a few things I wrote for the New York Times since my last newsletter:
"A Skull Bone Discovered in Greece May Alter the Story of Human Prehistory" Homo sapiens got to Europe 210,000 years ago!
"Why Are These Mice Hallucinating? Scientists Are in Their Heads"
"In the Ethiopian Mountains, Ancient Humans Were Living the High Life"
Here are some of the stories that stuck with me over the past month
Farewell David Corcoran, Dearest of Editors, by Christie Aschwanden (The Last Word on Nothing)
U.S. Significantly Weakens Endangered Species Act, by Lisa Friedman (The New York Times)
2°C: Beyond the Limit. Extreme climate change has arrived in America, by Steven Mufson, Chris Mooney, Juliet Eilperin, and John Muyskens (Washington Post)
Under Brazil’s Far-Right Leader, Amazon Protections Slashed and Forests Fall, by Letícia Casado and Ernesto Londoño (The New York Times)
Scientists glimpse oddball microbe that could help explain rise of complex life, by Jonathan Lambert (Nature)
A Cure for Ebola? Two New Treatments Prove Highly Effective in Congo, by Donald G. McNeil Jr. (The New York Times)
The largest bird in North America was nearly wiped out. Here’s how it fought its way back, by Reis Theibault (Washington Post)
Quantum Darwinism, an Idea to Explain Objective Reality, Passes First Tests, by Philip Ball (Quanta)
August 31, 2019 Decatur, GA. Decatur Book Festival. In conversation with Frans de Waal.
September 17, 2019 Washington, DC. Smithsonian. “An Evening With Carl Zimmer.”
October 12, 2019 Morristown, NJ. Morristown Festival of Books. Details to come.
October 23, 2019 San Francisco. Arts & Ideas at the JCCSF.
October 24, 2019 San Francisco. The Exploratorium.
NEW--> November 9, 2019 Charleston, SC. Charleston To Charleston Literary Festival
December 3, 2019 Nashville. Vanderbilt University. Details to come.
My latest book, She Has Her Mother's Laugh, is available from fine book mongers, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, BAM, Hudson Booksellers, and IndieBound.
You can find information and ordering links for my books here. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and LinkedIn. If someone forwarded this email to you, you can subscribe to it here.
Best wishes, Carl
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