My new book A Planet of Viruses is officially published on May 1. But if you’d like to get a taste of the book, pay a visit to Audubon Magazine’s web site, where they’ve got an excerpt.

The book is a linked series of essays. For each essay, I picked a single virus, but I chose ones that allowed me to explore a big idea in the world of virology. In the Audubon excerpt, for example, the virus is West Nile. As viruses go, West Nile is not all that dangerous. But its story is fascinating. West Nile’s tale is the classic American immigrant saga, from its arrival in New York City to its eventual spread across the country. Check it out.

Originally published April 25, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.

The Wall Street Journal recently asked me to review a new book called First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth. Astrobiology is a tricky subject to write about these days. It’s intensely exciting, despite the fact that its main object of study–life on other planets–has yet to be discovered.

I’ve given some thought to how we journalists should cover such a paradoxical science. We shouldn’t dismiss it outright, because astrobiologists have discovered fascinating things about life here on Earth, even if they have yet to find aliens. Yet we shouldn’t feel obligated to pump up every claim about the possibility of life elsewhere. We should be content to paint a portrait of the scientific process–including the intense debates–in all its gorey detail.

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