Дэвид Куаммен - все книги по циклам и сериям | Книги по порядку

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.

The Reluctant Mr Darwin

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

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

Natural Acts – A Sidelong View of Science and 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…

Our understanding of the ‘tree of life’, with powerful implications for human genetics, human health and our own human nature, has recently completely changed.This book is about a new method of telling the story of life on earth – through molecular phylogenetics. It involves a fairly simple method – the reading of the deep history of life by looking at the variation in protein molecules found in living organisms. For instance, we now know that roughly eight per cent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection.In The Tangled Tree, acclaimed science writer David Quammen 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 explains how molecular studies of evolution have brought startling recognitions about the tangled tree of life – including where we humans fit into it. Thanks to new technologies, 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 exploration of our transformed understanding of evolution and of life’s history itself.

For millennia, nature's biggest and fiercest predators have tormented mankind. The knowledge and fear of the existence of these ferocious man-eaters is forever in the back of our minds, looming in our worst nightmares. Millions of humans have suffered attacks by predators on land and at sea. Yet animals have always shared the landscape with humans. Since the dawn of time our ecosystems have been linked and humans have co-existed with flesh-eating beasts as members of the same food chain. Now,

Why have island ecosystems always suffered such high rates of extinction? In our age, with all the world's landscapes, from Tasmania to the Amazon to Yellowstone, now being carved into island-like fragments by human activity, the implications of this question are more urgent than ever. Over the past eight years, David Quammen has followed the threads of island biogeography on a globe-encircling journey of discovery.

Read this gripping, timely book about the transmission of deadly viruses from animal to human populations, and how we can fight the current Covid-19 pandemic.
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 Chi

In 1976 a deadly virus emerged from the Congo forest. As swiftly as it came, it disappeared, leaving no trace.

Over the four decades since, Ebola has emerged sporadically, each time to devastating effect. It can kill up to 90% of its victims. In between these outbreaks, it is untraceable, hiding deep in the jungle. The search is on to find Ebola’s elusive host animal. And until we find it, Ebola will continue to strike.
Acclaimed science writer and explorer David Quammen fi

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.

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.

Read this gripping, timely book about the transmission of deadly viruses from animal to human populations, and how we can fight the current Covid-19 pandemic.
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.
As we continue to feel the global impact of Covid-19, discover the book that predicted this viral disaster and the science that could stop the next one in its tracks.