David Quammen is an author and journalist whose twelve books include The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, and most recently Spillover, a work on the science, history, and human impacts of emerging diseases (especially viral diseases), which was short-listed for seven national and international awards.  In the past thirty years he has also published a few hundred pieces of short nonfiction—feature articles, essays, columns—in magazines such as Harper’s, National Geographic, Outside, Esquire, The Atlantic, Powder, and Rolling Stone.  He writes occasional Op Eds for The New York Times and reviews for The New York Times Book Review.  Quammen has been honored with an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is a three-time recipient of the National Magazine Award.  He is a Contributing Writer for National Geographic, in whose service he travels often, usually to wild and remote places.  Home is Bozeman, Montana.

Books by David Quammen

The Chimp and the River

by David Quammen - History, Human Rights, Medicine, Nonfiction, Science

AIDS originated with a virus in a chimpanzee, jumped to one human, and then infected 60 million people. This is the story of how an unnoticed chimpanzee infection became a human plague. David Quammen tracks the virus from chimp populations in the jungles of southeastern Cameroon to laboratories across the globe.