Air-Borne:
The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe

Air-Borne book cover

The fascinating, untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside down

Online version of full end matter (including notes and bibliography)

Check out the AIR-BORNE Book Tour!

Read an excerpt in Newsweek, and a Q&A about the book

Read “America Is Sleeping on a Powerful Defense Against Airborne Disease,” an article about AIR-BORNE in the Atlantic

Listen to Zimmer talk about AIR-BORNE on Radiolab

A “detailed and gripping account…AIR-BORNE shows us the ways seeing where we live means listening deeply — and being prepared to see what’s perhaps never been seen.”—New York Times Book Review

“This astute history of the scientific debates that shaped the Covid crisis will take readers’ breath away.”–Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

“A brisk, lyrical journey”—New York Times

“Astonishing…From airborne espionage and bioweapons to our latest understanding of COVID, Zimmer aims to lead readers on an exciting, surprising and eye-opening journey into the atmosphere.”—Scientific American

“Breathtaking facts plus superior science writing equals engaging, essential reading.” —Booklist (starred review)

“AIR-BORNE is a fascinating story of the evolution of a highly interdisciplinary field over centuries.” —Nature

“Informed by personal interviews with many top officials, physicians, and scientists, Zimmer’s reporting is equal parts riveting and infuriating.”—Science

“A triumph for persistent scientists, perhaps, but also a pointed reminder of the complexity, fragility and deeply human dependencies of evolving science.” —Wall Street Journal

“A reminder that the current decisions humans make regarding airborne life is informed by a deep history.”—Science News

“AIR-BORNE imparts a new respect for the invisible life we encounter with every breath we take.”—Apple Books–Best Books of the Month

“Gripping”–Associated Press

“Virtuosic…AIR-BORNE soars while bringing to earth the web of invisible lives that connect to our own.”–Hamilton Cain, Under the Sea Wall

“An always informative, often fascinating, and at times worrying look at humanity’s long speculation and exploration of what is in the air around us–Fantasy Literature

“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, author of Breathless

“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 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, Stanford University, author of Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will

“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, author of An Immense World

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. This last great biological frontier remains so mysterious that it took over two years for scientists to finally agree that the Covid pandemic was caused by an airborne virus. In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We travel to the tops of mountain glaciers, where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air, and follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments. We meet the long-forgotten pioneers of aerobiology including William and Mildred Wells, who tried for decades to warn the world about airborne infections, only to die in obscurity. Air-Borne chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of airborne biological weapons designed to spread anthrax, smallpox, and an array of other pathogens. Air-Borne also leaves readers looking 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 gripping history with the latest reporting on Covid and other threats to global health, Air-Borne surprises us on every page as it reveals the hidden world of the air.