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Microcosm: The Book:
Science writer Peter Dizikes reviews my book Microcosm for the New York Times. It's great to see that he gets it--i.e., he understands what I'm trying to do with E. coli in the book. I actually appreciate that more than...
Posted on June 28, 2008 1:22 PM • 3 Comments •
The strange thing about E. coli, as I explain in my book Microcosm, is that it has played a central part not just in the modern science of life, but in the political conflicts over life. It may come as...
Posted on June 24, 2008 9:05 PM • 18 Comments •
The British edition of Microcosm is coming out on July 3 (Brits can pre-order here, and here's a link for Americans). In conjunction with its publication, the Telegraph asked me to explain why I love E. coli so. Here's why....
Posted on June 24, 2008 9:09 AM • •
It's nice to get book reviews in both the popular press and academic journals. I hope everyone will read my books, but I also hope that scientists will consider them good science. And, speaking of Science, the journal of said...
Posted on June 23, 2008 12:02 PM • 1 Comments •
Hey Angelenos! I hope you can come out to catch my next talk about Microcosm. It's part of the Zocalo lecture series. I'll be talking next Wednesday, June 25, at 7:30 pm at the Skirball Cultural Center. Here are the...
Posted on June 18, 2008 1:16 PM • 2 Comments •
My recent post about a striking new experiment in evolution (E. coli evolving the ability to eat a new kind of food) is still drawing lots of commenters and links. Very cool! Not so cool are the claims that this...
Posted on June 13, 2008 10:55 AM • 20 Comments •
The field of biology has been wildly successful by taking what's called a reductionist approach, i.e., you tackle a small problem in isolation in order to gain insight into larger questions. In his new book, Microcosm: E. coli and the...
Posted on June 11, 2008 2:19 PM • 1 Comments •
Thursday I'll be heading up the road to talk about Microcosm at one of my favorite bookstores: RJ Julia in Madison CT. The talk is at 7, and it's free. And for once I don't have to fly to a...
Posted on June 9, 2008 12:20 PM • •
Imagine that mad scientists defied nature and violated the barriers between species. They injected human DNA into non-human creatures, altering their genomes into chimeras--unnatural fusions of man and beast. The goal of the scientists was to enslave these creatures,...
Posted on June 9, 2008 8:07 AM • •
A reader of Microcosm blogs: I am literally only 12 pages in, yet Zimmer has already managed to make me catch my breath, clutch the book to my chest, and feel my eyes get a little moist from the emotional...
Posted on June 6, 2008 10:22 AM • 1 Comments •
I spoke Tuesday on Seattle, and there's proof now! Alan Boyle, MSNBC's science guru, wrote a great piece on both the talk and the subject, my book Microcosm. Meanwhile, folks from Real Science were taping, and now you can listen...
Posted on June 5, 2008 8:21 PM • •
Don't forget to check in for the latest posts going up over at the Scienceblog Book Club. My book Microcosm has gotten us into a debate about the nature of life....
Posted on June 5, 2008 1:09 PM • •
I'm back at last from the west coast leg of the Microcosm tour. Portland had a cloudy, melancholy charm, and at Powell's I gave a reading in front of a collection of hand-made black velvet paintings from the nearby Velveteria....
Posted on June 5, 2008 11:06 AM • 20 Comments •
The microbial march continues! I'll be in Seattle today, giving two talks on Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. The first is a 1:30 talk at Microsoft Research. Then I'll be giving a public talk at Town...
Posted on June 3, 2008 8:34 AM • 1 Comments •
One of the most important experiments in evolution is going on right now in a laboratory in Michigan State University. A dozen flasks full of E. coli are sloshing around on a gently rocking table. The bacteria in those flasks...
Posted on June 2, 2008 9:41 PM • 319 Comments •
The French biologist Jacques Monod once famously said, "What is true for E. coli is true for the elephant." At the time, he was referring to the universal rules of molecular biology--of DNA and proteins, for example, that are the...
Posted on June 2, 2008 9:53 AM • 2 Comments •
The E. coli epidemic spreads today to the Bay Area. Please come out to Kepler's to hear me talk about Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life....
Posted on June 2, 2008 8:14 AM • •
One of the best things to come out of blogging is the blog book club. (See, for example, the book club at Talking Points Memo.) In the bad old days, the only way writers could respond to books was with...
Posted on June 1, 2008 8:00 PM • 1 Comments •
I'm heading cross-country to talk about Microcosm. First stop--Powell's bookstore in Portland tonight. Never been there before, so I'm looking forward to a bibliophile's pilgrimage. Hope to see Portlanders there!...
Posted on June 1, 2008 8:03 AM • 3 Comments •
E. coli is, arguably, the one species that scientists know best. If you type the name "Escherichia coli" into PubMed, the database of the National Library of Medicine, you'll get over a quarter of a million titles of scientific papers....
Posted on May 30, 2008 3:24 PM • 3 Comments •
I would love to introduce him to a certain resident of his gut. (Hat tip: Tree of Life)...
Posted on May 30, 2008 12:44 PM • 4 Comments •
Blogs are abuzz with the news that E. coli can solve classic math puzzles like the Burnt Pancake Puzzle. The paper itself is available for free here. Judging from the Frankensteinian anxiety this news seems to be triggering, people must...
Posted on May 21, 2008 11:27 AM • 4 Comments •
Had another author told me his publisher was sending me a copy of a book on Escherichia coli, I would have been perhaps quietly unenthusiastic. But best selling science writer Carl Zimmer is a master story teller and superb researcher....
Posted on May 18, 2008 9:28 AM • 9 Comments •
Blogging briefly from Chicago. Today's talk at the Field Museum went well--I managed to lure a fair number of people inside from a beautiful spring afternoon to hear me talk about a gut germ. I also had a chance to...
Posted on May 17, 2008 7:20 PM • 7 Comments •
The New York Sun has a positive review of Microcosm today, and part of me just wants to point you in its direction, let you read about the book's "ecstatically reflective moments," and leave it at that. But there's one...
Posted on May 14, 2008 9:30 AM • 13 Comments •
I'm heading to Boston on Friday to speak at the Harvard Book Store about Microcosm. It's at 7 pm, and it's free. Information is here. Then it's on to Chicago, where I'll be talking at the Field Museum on Saturday...
Posted on May 12, 2008 4:07 PM • 4 Comments •
As long as I can remember, I've been a fan of George Johnson's writing about science. He has always kept focus on the deep mysteries of existence, even while writing in a deliciously clear style. So it was a real...
Posted on May 10, 2008 10:55 AM • •
From the new issue: "It is a powerful account of the dynamic, complicated and social world we share with this ordinary yet remarkable bug. Evolution and genetics glitter among the pages, as do the lives and experiments of the scientists...
Posted on May 9, 2008 8:36 PM • 3 Comments •
I'll be talking on Coast to Coast at a slightly less wee-hours time: 1 am on Sunday....
Posted on May 9, 2008 8:35 PM • 2 Comments •
Just a quick note to say that, if all goes according to plan, I will be appearing on the Internets on bloggingheads tomorrow, and on the radio show Coast-to-Coast in the wee hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning. In both cases...
Posted on May 9, 2008 2:44 PM • 1 Comments •
At last we come to the fifth winning question about Microcosm, from Ceph. Once again, thanks to the ~240 people who entered the contest. I hope my answers to these five questions give you a sense of what my...
Read on »
Posted on May 9, 2008 1:00 PM • 2 Comments •
Here's the fourth winning question about Microcosm, from Sigmund: Creationists often point to the bacterial cell and say something to the effect of "the cell is so complicated it is highly improbable that it could have spontaneously formed - therefore...
Read on »
Posted on May 9, 2008 12:00 PM • •
Now we come to the third winning question about Microcosm. Kenatiod writes, Long ago, in bacteriology class, the teacher (an ex-nun at an ex-Catholic college) was telling us about the type "F" pili that are used to pass DNA so...
Read on »
Posted on May 9, 2008 11:00 AM • 1 Comments •
Here's the second winning question about Microcosm, from Kevin: E. coli is a bacteria commonly found in the intestines of some animals. What distinguishes the common and harmless strains from those that can cause illness and death? A lot of...
Read on »
Posted on May 9, 2008 10:00 AM • 1 Comments •
If you're just tuning in, on Tuesday I offered five free signed copies of my new book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life to readers if they sent in a question. I was quite stoked to see...
Posted on May 9, 2008 7:00 AM • 2 Comments •
Thanks to everyone who submitted the 240 or so questions about Microcosm, E. coli, and life in general. I'll pick five of them tonight and answer them tomorrow and start signing copies for the winners. And if you didn't enter,...
Posted on May 8, 2008 5:09 PM • 2 Comments •
From the blog of Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map and Mind Wide Open Go Buy Microcosm Right Now Carl Zimmer may be my favorite science writer around today (others seem to agree), so I'm excited to report that...
Posted on May 8, 2008 3:01 PM • 1 Comments •
Just a quick reminder--I'll be keeping the contest for a free autographed copy of Microcosm till 5 pm this afternoon. Think of a question about E. coli (and what it can say about life itself), and get in the running...
Posted on May 8, 2008 8:42 AM • •
I'm in a celebratory mood. Microcosm is published today. In my mind, I can see the books moving out of warehouses onto trucks, off to book stores and front door steps. This morning I read a great review from Mykola...
Posted on May 6, 2008 9:50 AM • 243 Comments •
Tomorrow is the publication date of Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. I'll be celebrating by sending out some signed copies (details tomorrow), but in the meantime, here's an interview that just came out this morning about...
Posted on May 5, 2008 10:46 AM • 3 Comments •
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?...
Posted on April 24, 2008 10:09 PM • 4 Comments •
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....
Posted on April 21, 2008 11:32 AM • 6 Comments •
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...
Posted on April 19, 2008 12:09 AM • 3 Comments •
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...
Posted on April 16, 2008 2:30 PM • •
Greg left a comment: You know, Carl, if you don't have one of these yet, you might consider picking one up to accompany you on your (hoped for) book tour. Greg, I always try to find a plush toy related...
Posted on March 31, 2008 11:07 AM • 3 Comments •
My recent piece on Slate about E. coli, evolution, and germ warfare is now on their podcast. You can listen to it with this embedded player below, or grab the mp3 file. It is very weird to hear someone else...
Posted on March 24, 2008 9:22 AM • 3 Comments •
Having just written a book all about E. coli, including its evolution, I came to wonder what Darwin thought about microbes. I've searched far and wide. I've looked in biographies, for example, and the awesome site Darwin Online. I have...
Posted on March 20, 2008 10:38 AM • 5 Comments •
Well, we're down now to seven weeks till Microcosm hits the book stores. Here and elsewhere I'm going to discuss some of the fascinating things I discovered about E. coli--and life in general--while working on the book. For instance, I...
Posted on March 19, 2008 12:52 PM • 3 Comments •
A few weeks ago I moderated a discussion about synthetic biology down in Washington. Excerpts from the talk (including the one above) are now posted here....
Posted on March 17, 2008 11:40 AM • •
After a lot of writing and a lot of waiting, the first review of my next book, Microcosm, has just come out. Actually, it's coming out on Monday in Publisher's Weekly, but they apparently couldn't wait, sending out a link...
Posted on February 15, 2008 12:38 PM • 9 Comments •
Via Tara Smith, I learned of the passing of Joshua Lederberg. I came to appreciate the full scope of Lederberg's work while working on my book Microcosm; by discovering the secret sex life of E. coli, he helped build the...
Posted on February 5, 2008 7:55 PM • 1 Comments •
University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward and I are talking again on bloggingheads--this time about aliens. Ward explains why science fiction writers hate him, and why we need to breed tiny astronauts if we ever want to get out of...
Posted on February 2, 2008 11:27 AM • 7 Comments •
Earlier today, I took a walk in the blustery winds of Washington DC with Drew Endy, a synthetic biologist from MIT. We had just been talking with Congressional staffers about the promise and perils of being able to manipulate life....
Posted on January 31, 2008 12:35 AM • 13 Comments •
This is the sort of thing that made me decide to write a whole book about these bugs... LS9 Inc., a company in San Carlos, Calif., is already using E. coli bacteria that have been reprogrammed with synthetic DNA to...
Posted on December 17, 2007 4:02 PM • 3 Comments •
Some of the blogs that I find most interesting are also the most sporadic. Fortunately, RSS feeds mean their occasional utterances don't disappear off my radar. Rob Carlson's blog, synthesis, is an excellent, deeply considered blog on the rise of...
Posted on December 13, 2007 12:50 AM • 5 Comments •
Ugh. Several days, pretty much day and night, going over the copy-edited Microcosm manuscript with a green pencil. I haven't had any time to write any original blog posts--or even reply to most of my email. But I can at...
Posted on October 25, 2007 1:12 PM • 1 Comments •
At least for me, getting to see the cover of a new book for the first time is a great morale boost. The designer usually finishes it up right around the time when I'm starting to wonder if the...
Posted on October 22, 2007 11:08 AM • 13 Comments •
In the past few months, the New York Times science section has been putting together some special packages of articles, and this week's bundle is on the topic of evolution. You can read John Noble Wilford on hominids, Nicholas Wade...
Posted on June 26, 2007 12:03 AM • 11 Comments •
If you sometimes look around and ask yourself, "So what is life, anyway?"--even if you haven't ingested some illegal substance--you may be interested in a story I've written for Seed magazine. "The Meaning of Life" is the cover story for...
Posted on June 22, 2007 9:56 AM • 8 Comments •
For the past few years, Craig Venter, the human genome pioneer, has been trying to build an organism from scratch. While Venter is no shrinking wallflower (see, for example, a recent interview in Newsweek), he has been keeping his synthetic-life...
Read on »
Posted on June 7, 2007 1:37 PM • 23 Comments •
Next week I'll be heading to Utah. Southern Utah University asked me to be their Visiting Eccles Scholar, which means that I'll be spending a couple days talking with students and faculty. I'll also be giving two talks that are...
Posted on March 20, 2007 2:10 PM • 5 Comments •
Science moves forward by flow. One experiment leads to another. Observations accrue. What seem like side trips or even dead ends may bring a fuzzy picture further into focus. Yet science often seems as if it moves forward one bombshell...
Posted on March 19, 2007 8:00 AM • 15 Comments •
On the last day of December, I turned in the final draft of my book about E. coli and the meaning of life. This is the sixth time around for me, and I'm getting familiar now with the havoc the...
Posted on January 9, 2007 11:21 AM • 11 Comments •
The manuscript clock is still ticking, and so, in lieu of true blogging, let me direct your attention to another article of mine. This time it's the cover story in the December issue of Discover. Discover chose Jay Keasling as...
Posted on December 18, 2006 5:18 PM • 2 Comments •
Over the weekend I wrote about the natural history of the Escherichia coli strain that has contaminated spinach. According to reports today, 109 people have been identified as sickened with Escherichia coli O157:H7, and one has died. In the comment...
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Posted on September 18, 2006 1:04 PM • 21 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
Don't eat your spinach. That's the word coming today from the FDA: they want everyone to avoid bagged spinach until they can get to the bottom of a nasty outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7, a virulent strain that infects an...
Posted on September 15, 2006 8:48 PM • 35 Comments •
Over the past few months I've been working on a book on Escherichia coli (more on that later). To get a feel for how scientists work with the bug, I've been spending some time at the lab of Paul...
Posted on May 23, 2006 9:49 PM • 1 Comments •
Carl Zimmer is a science writer. PLEASE VISIT THE LOOM AT ITS NEW HOME.
