Overview

"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 the flu, 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, in fact, that we are actually part virus: the human genome contains more DNA from viruses than our own genes. Meanwhile, scientists are discovering viruses everywhere they look: in the soil, in the ocean, even in deep caves miles underground. This fascinating book explores the hidden world of viruses-a world that each of us inhabit. Here Carl Zimmer, popular science writer and author of Discover magazine's award-winning blog The Loom, presents the latest research on how viruses hold sway over our lives and our biosphere, how viruses helped give rise to the first life-forms, how viruses are producing new diseases, how we can harness viruses for our own ends, and how viruses will continue to control our fate for years to come. In this eye-opening tour through the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life as we know it, we learn that some treatments for the common cold do more harm to us than good; that the world's oceans are home to an astonishing 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 viruses; and that the evolution of HIV is now in overdrive, spawning more mutated strains than we care to imagine. The New York Times Book Review calls Carl Zimmer as fine a science essayist as we have.A"" A Planet of Viruses is sure to please his many fans and further enhance his reputation as one of America's most respected and admired science journalists."

Full Product Details

9780226983356

Table of Contents

Reviews

Talk about doing more with less. Viruses do it, and this book does it. So complex a field as the fast-moving frontier of knowledge about viruses needs a superb introduction. Here it is.A -Stewart Brand

"Talk about doing more with less. Viruses do it, and this book does it. So complex a field as the fast-moving frontier of knowledge about viruses needs a superb introduction. Here it is.A""-Stewart Brand"

Author Information

Carl Zimmer is a lecturer at Yale University, where he teaches writing about science and the environment. He is the author of numerous books, including Microcosm; Parasite Rex; Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea; At the Water's Edge; and Soul Made Flesh. His numerous essays and articles on the life sciences have appeared in the pages of the New York Times, Scientific American, Discover, Time, Science, Popular Science, and National Geographic. His work has been anthologized in both The Best American Science Writing and The Best American Science and Nature Writing series. He is also a two-time winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science Journalism Award and winner of the National Academies Communication Award.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available