It’s been ten days since the publication of Life’s Edge. For the past couple weeks, I’ve taken a break from covering the pandemic for the New York Times to work on the book launch. Here are a few highlights so far:
–Slate published an excerpt about how brain organoids challenge our notions of how life begins
–Quanta published another excerpt on how philosophers can help biologists in their struggle to define life. One option: give up!
–I reposted my Sunday Review essay about viruses and life on Medium.
—Science News reviewed Life’s Edge: “From the struggle to define when life begins and ends to the hunt for how life got started, the book offers an engaging, in-depth look at some of biology’s toughest questions.”
–Biologist and author Rob Dunn reviews the book in Science: “By the end of this book, I felt challenged as a biologists to pull together my colleagues to talk about the big issues related to…the origins of life, and the margins of life.”
–I joined Walter Isaacson on Morning Joe on MSNBC to talk about our new books.
–I spoke on Wisconsin Public Radio about Life’s Edge.
–Looking forward, please join me next Thursday in a talk hosted by my favorite local book spots: Breakwater Books in Guilford, Connecticut, and the Guilford Free Library. Register here.
–Since I can’t sign books for people in person at live events, I’m happy to send autographed bookplates. Please provide some kind of “proof of life” that you bought the book (on Twitter, for example), and contact me via carlzimmer.com
That’s all for now. Stay safe!
My next book is Life’s Edge: Searching for What It Means to Be Alive. You can find information and ordering links for my thirteen other books here. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and LinkedIn. If someone forwarded this email to you, you can subscribe to it here.
Best wishes, Carl
Originally published March 19, 2021. Copyright 2021 Carl Zimmer.