Want to know what books Carl Zimmer recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Carl Zimmer's favorite book recommendations of all time.
Carl ZimmerHe will talk, for example, about a male spider that throws himself into the jaws of a female as they mate. She will actually devour him while he is still mating. (Source)
Carl ZimmerYes. This is a fascinating book on so many different levels. It is really compelling as the story of the author trying to uncover the history of the woman from whom all these cells came. (Source)
A.J. JacobsGreat writer. (Source)
Variety, even deformity, may seem like an unlikely route by which to approach normality, even perfection. Yet much of what we know about the mechanisms of human development, growth, and aging comes from the study of people who are afflicted with congenital diseases, most of which have genetic causes. Congenital abnormalities reveal not only errors within the womb, but also our evolutionary history.
In Mutants, Armand Marie Leroi gives a brilliant narrative account of our... more
Carl ZimmerThat’s right. Armand Leroi is a biologist at Imperial College, London. And this is a really wonderful book because Leroi takes what could have just been a freak show and turns it into a really amazing experience. He writes about these people as people. He finds wonderful portraits of individuals – for example, some of them are covered in hair and look like wolves – and he tells the story of their... (Source)
Carl ZimmerI chose this because I think it expresses a really important idea. Richard Dawkins wrote this book not long after The Selfish Gene came out. That was his landmark book, in which he argued for a gene-centric view of evolution. Genes build bodies. They build traits, which are known as phenotypes, in order to be replicated in the next generation. (Source)
Peter AtkinsShows a highly imaginative approach to understanding the nature of the biosphere. A very clever book. (Source)
Carl ZimmerEven when living things are operating normally and humming along, it’s still beyond our ordinary understanding. You really have to stretch your powers of imagination to try to get a sense of what it is like inside of a cell. Ironically, textbooks can make that imagination more difficult. If they want to show how genes are used to make proteins, they show a very tiny, isolated piece of DNA, and... (Source)
Stephen Curry@cshperspectives @MHendr1cks David Goodsell’s book, The Machinery of Life, is great for showing molecular crowding. https://t.co/s7h7Yx2MIk (Source)
Don't have time to read Carl Zimmer's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.