Air-Borne

Author Carl Zimmer
Narrator Joe Ochman
Publisher Pan Macmillan
Publish Date 27 February 2025
Run Time 15 hours and 53 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Biology, life sciences, History of science, Infectious and contagious diseases, Microbiology (non-medical), Science: general issues.

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What to expect

"An extraordinary history of the perils and promise of every breath we take" James Nestor, New York Times bestselling author of Breath

"Another brilliant work from one of the very best science writers, Air-Borne will leave you agog at the incredible world that floats unseen around us" Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World

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Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air – and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life.

In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and Baillie Gifford-shortlisted author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments, and meet NASA scientists who send balloons even higher, to search for life in the stratosphere.

Zimmer chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of biological weapons designed to spread anthrax and smallpox. Air-Borne prompts us to look at the world with new eyes – as a place where the oceans and forests loft trillions of cells into the air, where microbes eat clouds, and where life soars thousands of miles on the wind.

Weaving together spellbinding history with the latest reporting on airborne threats to global health, this masterwork makes visible an invisible world.

Critics Review

An extraordinary history of the perils and promise of every breath we take

James Nestor, New York Times bestselling author of Breath

Another brilliant work from one of the very best science writers, Air-Borne will leave you agog at the incredible world that floats unseen around us, and outraged at the forces that stopped us from appreciating that world until, for many people, it was too late. It is a book about how much there is still left to know, and how frustrating it can be to turn knowledge into wisdom

Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World

A fish doesn’t know it’s wet. And we rarely recognize that we are bathed in air, air carrying multitudes of microbes. Air-Borne chronicles the history of this insight. With Zimmer’s usual superb writing, it is filled with fascinating science, visionary scientists who were often completely wrong, and poignant moments reflecting the vast human suffering caused by such microbes. And throughout is the dread that makes Air-Borne a page-turner – the knowledge that the air eventually carried SARS-Cov2 and may yet bring something worse. Air-Borne is deeply important and unsettling

Robert Sapolsky, New York Times bestselling author of Determined

Carl Zimmer details the long history of studying microbes in the air and explains why that science got derailed. It’s a fascinating and also cautionary tale

Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of The Code Breaker

The air we breathe is the most important thing in the world to us. Yet most of us pay no attention to it. Carl Zimmer has. Through his signature in-depth reporting and lively narrative stories, he shows us what a dynamic force our air is, profoundly shaping our health and evolutionary history. Air-Borne is also an urgent call to understand the invisible species floating around us, so that we don’t make the same mistakes in the next public health crisis that we face

Sam Kean, author of Caesar's Last Breath

Carl Zimmer has a knack for seeing the small things but thinking big. Air-Borne is full of fascinations at both levels. From the first page, you know you’re in the hands of a master

David Quammen, New York Times bestselling author of Breathless

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