A few days ago, I sent my publisher the final polishes to my next book, AIR-BORNE: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe. I’ve kept pretty mum about the project for the past couple years while I’ve been researching and writing it. But now you can officially pre-order a copy. So I’m delighted to send you this email to tell you about the book.
AIR-BORNE sprouted from a seed planted during the pandemic. In early 2020, I scrambled with my colleagues at the New York Times to keep up with the emerging science of Covid-19. On some fronts, the research raced forward with impressive speed. But the virus also had a knack for defying deeply held assumptions.
One of the strangest mysteries was how the virus spread. Early in 2020, my wife and I spent a lot of time wiping down the groceries. And then I’d go into my office to write about strange super-spreader events that had nothing to do with groceries. My Times colleague Apoorva Mandalvilli reported on scientists who argued the virus could spread by air. In Wired, Megan Molteni wrote an award-winning piece on the confusion that lurks behind public health guidelines for airborne diseases. Meanwhile, WHO and CDC responded to the emerging research with a puzzling slowness, which many scientists now look back on as a deadly error.
This confusion left me intrigued. I would talk with scientists from time to time to make sense of it. And they would talk to me about history. So I started looking at that history, too. I dug up letters, memos, and unpublished manuscripts buried in archives. Along the way I came to realize that what we experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic was part of an even bigger story that had yet to be told properly in a book. It was not just a story about one pandemic, but about all the life that floats in the air and the many ways it affects humanity: a branch of science called aerobiology.
AIR-BORNE is that story. Its characters include some of the great figures of science, such as Louis Pasteur and Charles Darwin, along famous figures like Charles Lindbergh. It also includes pioneers who tried to establish aerobiology as a science, only to slide into obscurity. In the book, I also look at how aerobiology has played a role in pivotal moments in history, from the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago to the Great Famine of Ireland to the Iraq War. Even as public health experts dismissed the threat of airborne diseases, American and Soviet scientists secretly used aerobiology to create huge arsenals of biological weapons, from anthrax bombs to balloons filled with wheat-killing spores.
While life in the air has wreaked immense suffering on humanity, aerobiology is revealing how important it is to the entire planet. I spent time aerobiologists who are trying to track life’s global flight patterns. They’re finding that the sky is filled with an incalculable number of organisms—and has been for billions of years. Even clouds are home to life. The residents of clouds influence the weather and rain down antiobiotic resistance genes on us. Researchers look now at the life of the air as a huge ecosystem they call the aerobiome. In working on AIR-BORNE, I ended up feeling surprisingly hopeful that we can find a peaceful coexistence with it. But first we have to appreciate the aerobiome’s scope and power.
Over the next few months, I’ll have more to share about the book in the run-up to its publication, including showing off the book’s cover when it’s ready. But in the meantime, please consider pre-ordering AIR-BORNE. Thanks!
Posted August 2, 2024