Дэвид Куаммен — новинки

Научный писатель Дэвид Куаммен объясняет, как недавние открытия в молекулярной биологии могут изменить наше понимание эволюции и истории жизни, оказав огромное влияние на здоровье человека и даже на нашу собственную человеческую природу.
В середине 1970-х годов ученые начали использовать последовательности ДНК для повторного изучения истории всей жизни. Возможно, самым поразительным открытием в этой новой области-изучении разнообразия и родства жизни на молекулярном уровне-является горизонтальный перенос генов (HGT), или перемещение генов по линиям видов. Оказывается, что HGT была широко распространена и важна. Например, теперь мы знаем, что примерно восемь процентов человеческого генома появилось не в результате традиционного наследования от непосредственно предковых форм, а в результате вирусной инфекции—типа HGT.
Дэвид Куаммен рассказывает об этих открытиях через жизнь исследователей, которые их сделали—таких как Карл вуз, самый важный малоизвестный биолог двадцатого века; Линн Маргулис, печально известный индивидуалист, чьи дикие идеи о “мозаичных” существах оказались верными; и Цутому Вантанабе, который обнаружил, что бедствие устойчивых к антибиотикам бактерий является прямым результатом горизонтального переноса генов, что привело к глубокому изучению истории генома в связи с глобальным кризисом общественного здравоохранения. (меньше)

National Book Award Finalist

The story of the worldwide scientific quest to decipher the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, trace its source, and make possible the vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

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” would 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.

Весь мир был охвачен глобальной пандемией, которая привела к гибели сотен тысяч человек. Новый зоонозный вирус преодолел межвидовой барьер. Это явление, когда новый патоген попадает к людям из дикой природы и может повторяться снова и снова. Можем ли мы предотвратить это? В этой книге эта тема становится главным вопросом, который необходимо задать самим себе.

Известный научный писатель Дэвид Куаммен путешествовал по миру и пытался понять разрушительный потенциал распространения вирусов. Он нашел захватывающие и трагичные истории, тревогу среди чиновников и глубокую обеспокоенность будущим в глазах исследователей. Перед нами встают невероятно важные на сегодняшний день вопросы: являются ли пандемии независимыми несчастьями или они связаны между собой? Они появляются сами по себе или наша деятельность является их причиной? Что мы можем сделать, чтобы не допустить следующей трагедии? Куаммен прослеживает происхождение Эболы, атипичной пневмонии, птичьего гриппа, болезни Лайма и других вирусных вспышек, включая мрачную и неожиданную историю о том, как начался СПИД.

First, a horse in Brisbane falls ill: fever, swelling, bloody froth. Then thirteen others drop dead. The foreman at the stables becomes ill and the trainer dies. What is going on? As globalization spreads and as we destroy the ancient ecosystems, we encounter strange and dangerous infections that originate in animals but that can be transmitted to humans. Diseases that were contained are being set free and the results are potentially catastrophic. In a journey that takes him from southern China to the Congo, from Bangladesh to Australia, David Quammen tracks these infections to their source and asks what we can do to prevent some new pandemic spreading across the face of the earth.

Nonpareil science writer David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life’s history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature.

In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field—the study of life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level—is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection—a type of HGT.

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.

“Quammen is no ordinary writer. He is simply astonishing, one of that rare class of writer gifted with verve, ingenuity, humor, guts, and great heart” (Elle). Now, in The Tangled Tree, he explains how molecular studies of evolution have brought startling recognitions about the tangled tree of life—including where we humans fit upon it. Thanks to new technologies such as CRISPR, we now have the ability to alter even our genetic composition—through sideways insertions, as nature has long been doing. The Tangled Tree is a brilliant guide to our transformed understanding of evolution, of life’s history, and of our own human nature.

Несмотря на все успехи современной медицины, мы по-прежнему живем под угрозой глобальной смертельной эпидемии. И хотя человечеству удалось справиться со многими болезнями, которые прежде уносили сотни тысяч или миллионы жизней, на смену им приходят новые, не менее грозные напасти, и самые опасные из них — те, что передаются человеку от животных. Вспышка лихорадки Эбола, унесшая с 2014 года более 11 тысяч жизней, в очередной раз напомнила, что от большинства подобных инфекций у нас нет никакой или практически никакой защиты. Что же станет «чумой XXI века»? Какая смертельная инфекция способна поставить под угрозу само существование…

“Science writing as detective story at its best.” —Jennifer Ouellette, Scientific American

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Scientific American Best Book of the Year, and a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Ebola, SARS, Hendra, AIDS, and countless other deadly viruses all have one thing in common: the bugs that transmit these diseases all originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. In this gripping account, David Quammen takes the reader along on this astonishing quest to learn how, where from, and why these diseases emerge and asks the terrifying question: What might the next big one be?

Natural Acts – A Sidelong View of Science and Nature Revised Edition

Natural Acts – A Sidelong View of Science and Nature

The Reluctant Mr Darwin

At the intersection of science and art, documentary and fantasy, the beautiful and the grotesque lies the work of Alexis Rockman, whose meticulously rendered paintings fascinate, amuse, and alarm -- often simultaneously -- as they explore the relationship between humanity and nature. A native New Yorker who frequented the American Museum of Natural History as a boy, Rockman is inspired by botanical and zoological illustrations, as well as early-twentieth-century murals and dioramas. Yet his work goes beyond those genres to portray, with dark humor, a variety of mutated and mutant animals (such as square cows and featherless chickens), interspecies couplings, and macabre visions of a future world. 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. Important large-scale works, such as A Recent History of the World and Evolution, are reproduced as dramatic fold-out pages. Complementing the visual documentation of Rockman's work is commentary by the artist himself. Three incisive essays further elucidate the scientific and artistic influences on Rockman's art and show how, at the same time, he has broken with those traditions to create a unique, powerful, and at times haunting vision of the collision between humankind and the natural world.

Monster of God – The Man–Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind

David Quammen's book, The Song of the Dodo, is a brilliant, stirring work, breathtaking in its scope, far-reaching in its message -- a crucial book in precarious times, which radically alters the way in which we understand the natural world and our place in that world. It's also a book full of entertainment and wonders.
In The Song of the Dodo, we follow Quammen's keen intellect through the ideas, theories, and experiments of prominent naturalists of the last two centuries. We trail after him as he travels the world, tracking the subject of island biogeography, which encompasses nothing less than the study of the origin and extinction of all species. Why is this island idea so important? Because islands are where species most commonly go extinct -- and because, as Quammen points out, we live in an age when all of Earth's landscapes are being chopped into island-like fragments by human activity.
Through his eyes, we glimpse the nature of evolution and extinction, and in so doing come to understand the monumental diversity of our planet, and the importance of preserving its wild landscapes, animals, and plants. We also meet some fascinating human characters. By the book's end we are wiser, and more deeply concerned, but Quammen leaves us with a message of excitement and hope.