Earlier this week, I walked into the office of my editor, Stephen Morrow, to discover a stack of books. Real books–not pdf files, not galleys, but hardback copies of She Has Her Mother’s Laugh suitable for curling up in bed with or propping open your front door or cracking open walnuts (warning: past performance is no guarantee of future results).
In celebration of this glorious event, my publisher is going to pick ten Friday’s Elk readers to win a two-book pack: a finished copy of She Has Her Mother’s Laugh, plus The Descent of Man: The Concise Edition.
The Descent of Man is one of Darwin’s underappreciated classics–partly because it’s a massive, catalog-like tome. For my concise edition, I selected some of the key passages that have framed our thinking about human evolution ever since, and wrote a set of essays to accompany them. You can get more information about The Descent of Man: The Concise Edition on my web site.
All current readers of Friday’s Elk–plus anyone who signs up by May 14–will be eligible. If you know of anyone who’d like to receive these books, forward them this email and let them know they can subscribe to it here.
And to new subscribers who learned about this book giveaway on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Linkedin) welcome! I try to get this newsletter out each week, letting readers know about stuff I’ve been up to–stories, books, podcasts, talks, etc.–and sometimes share stuff from other people that’s been intriguing me. You can read past issues of Friday’s Elk here.
In Search of the First Animal
For my column this week in the New York Times, I take a look at the dawn of the animal kingdom. Over 650 million years ago, our single-celled ancestors evolved bodies, and the world was never the same. We don’t know exactly what that ur-animal looked like, but now a pair of scientists have taken a different look at it: they’ve reconstructed some of its genome.
May 17, 2018 “Exploring the Complexity and Controversy of Heredity” Keynote Lecture, Bio-IT World, Boston
May 21, 2018 “Biotechnology and Its Future Impact on Greater Boston” (panel discussion) Boston Athenaeum
May 30, 2018 Harvard Book Store
May 31, 2018 RJ Julia Bookstore, Madison CT
June 6, 2018 Kramerbooks, Washington DC
June 19, 2018 Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley, Palo Alto CA
June 20, 2018 Denver Museum of Nature and Science (details to come)
September 20, 2018 University of Bath (UK), Evolution in the 21st Century (details to come)
October 19, 2018 CSICon, Las Vegas
October 25, 2018 Mount Holyoke College (details to come)
NEW–>November 7, 2018 Colorado State University: Murray Honors Visiting Scholar Lecture (details to come)
You can find out about my 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 May 4, 2018. Copyright 2018 Carl Zimmer.