I’ve brought together some of my favorite pieces about the brain in two ebooks, Brain Cuttings: Fifteen Journeys Through the Mind, and More Brain Cuttings: Further Explorations of the Mind. Earlier this year, the distributor for the ebooks, IPG, got into an ugly fight with Amazon, which led to Amazon yanking IPG’s 5,000 ebooks. Which was a bummer. Just recently, though, the two sides came to an agreement. (The details are here.)

And that means my ebooks are back. Click here for the Kindle edition of Brain Cuttings, and here for More Brain Cuttings.

Of course, you can also order both ebooks elsewhere if you’re so inclined:

Brain Cuttings: iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Scott & Nix (my publisher)

More Brain Cuttings: iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Scott & Nix

Originally published June 8, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.

In the past few weeks, there’s been a string of horrific tales of cannibalism and other zombie-esque behavior in the news. How to explain a handful of reports of people doing the unspeakable? One answer circulating around these days is that it must be parasites. And for some journalists, the question demands a call to the Centers for Disease Control to find out what they’re hiding from us!

Continue reading “Your guide to zombie parasite journalism” →

Even the most elaborate pictures of the tree of life you can find online are gaunt shadows of life’s full diversity. In tomorrow’s New York Times, I write about a team of scientists who are setting out to build a tree with every described species on Earth–and program it so that the entire scientific community can help tease out its branches and add more branches as they discover the six, sixty, or six hundred million more unnamed species on Earth. Check it out.

Originally published June 4, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.

Here’s a round-up of the latest pieces over at Download the Universe, the science ebook review.

Continue reading “Of Victorian Chemists and Online Pornographers: Catching Up With Download the Universe” →

It’s hard to believe that the World Science Festival is now in its fifth year. What started out feeling like an experiment is now a New York institution. I’m looking forward to participating yet again, and hope you’ll be able to join me.

On Friday I’ll be moderating an event called “Illuminating Resilience.” Four experts will discuss how people withstand life’s hardest shocks, and manage to bounce back.

Continue reading “World Science Festival: Resilience and Books This Weekend” →