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Zimmer133.jpg Carl Zimmer is a science writer. PLEASE VISIT THE LOOM AT ITS NEW HOME.

Books by Carl Zimmer

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"Essential reading"--Publisher's Weekly
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life



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Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man: The Concise Edition



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"As fine a book as one will find on the subject."-- Scientific American

Revised with a new introduction





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"Superb...a non-stop delight."-- New Scientist





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"Fascinating...thrilling... Zimmer has produced a top-notch work of popular science." --LA Times





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"A fascinating story, which Zimmer unfolds as a tale of high-stakes scientific sleuthing...thanks to marvelous lucid writing." --Booklist





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The Original Home of the Giant Flatulent Raccoon

Why the Loom?

"...among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters, heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad."
--Moby Dick

April 30, 2008

Why Weird Animals Matter, Continued: Untangling the Branches

Category: Evolution

In my last post I wrote about how scientists are learning about the origin of animals by studying their genomes. One of the surprising findings of the latest research is that a group of animals called comb jellies (ctenophores) belong...

Read on »

April 28, 2008

Weird Animals, And Why They Matter

Category: Evolution

Today in the Boston Globe, I write about how scientists are revising their understanding of the evolution of animals, thanks to more DNA and more weird animals. My favorite quote comes from biologist Mark Pallen, who says that the human...

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April 24, 2008

Book Tour News--And An Actual Book!

Category: Microcosm: The Book

I recorded a video for my Facebook page about the Microcosm book tour, which I've cloned below. Still fine-tuning my video interfaces...how does YouTube embed, compared to blip.tv?...

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April 21, 2008

E. coli Infects the New York Times

Category: Microcosm: The Book

With two weeks to go till Microcosm's publication date, I'm happy to direct your attention to an adapted excerpt that's running in tomorrow's New York Times. In this passage, I discuss what I like to call E. coli's fingerprints....

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April 19, 2008

Slouching Toward Total Video Immersion, the Next Step

Category: Evolution

Click here to watch it on blip.tv (you can even watch in full screen, if you dare...)...

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Slouching Towards Total Video Immersion

Category: Evolution

NOTE: I'VE SET UP A FLASH VERSION OF THIS TALK HERE. DON'T BOTHER TRYING TO DOWNLOAD THE QUICKTIME VERSION I DESCRIBED IN THIS POST. Recently I gave the Discovery Lecture at Carleton University in Ottawa, in which I talked...

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Is There Nothing E. coli Cannot Do? Part Two of a Continuing Series...

Category: Microcosm: The Book

In my new Dissection column over at Wired, I take a look at a remarkable new experiment on E. coli. Scientists randomly rewired the network of genes that control much of the microbe's activity and found that it generally just...

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April 16, 2008

Library Journal Weighs In

Category: Microcosm: The Book

Three weeks away from the publication of Microcosm, and another kind review has come out, this time from Library Journal: To display a broad swath of the people, scientific processes, and discoveries involved in biology, science writer Zimmer (Soul Made...

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April 14, 2008

Heading for Denver For Some Animal Spirits

Category: Upcoming Talks

I'm heading to Colorado to give a talk at the University of Denver tomorrow. The subject of the talk is my book Soul Made Flesh, about the birth of neurology in the 1600s (see PZ Myer's kind review here). I'll...

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April 13, 2008

Frankenstein Freak-outs

Category: Evolution

Radiolab is a show about science that briliantly uses radio's greatest strength--sound--to bring stories to life in ways we print goons can only dream about. I wrote a story about how animals sleep. The Radiolab folks played the sound of...

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