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Malibu Library Speaker Series: Author David Quammen

In-Person Program

The Malibu Library Speaker Series presents author David Quammen. For adults.

The Malibu Library Speaker Series presents author David Quammen on Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 7 pm at Malibu City Hall.

David Quammen’s books include Breathless, The Tangled Tree, The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, and Spillover, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and recipient of the Premio Letterario Merck, in Rome. He has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Outside, among other magazines, and is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award.

National Book Award finalist Breathless tells the story of the worldwide scientific race to decipher the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, trace its source, and make possible the vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic—a “luminous, passionate account of the defining crisis of our time.” (The New York Times).

Breathless is a “gripping” (The Atlantic) but “clear-eyed analysis” (Time) of SARs-CoV-2 and its fierce journey through the human population, as seen by the scientists who study its origin, its ever-changing nature, and its capacity to kill us. Quammen expertly shows how strange new viruses emerge from animals into humans as we disrupt wild ecosystems and how those viruses adapt to their human hosts, sometimes causing global catastrophe. He explains why this coronavirus will probably be a “forever virus,” destined to circulate among humans and bedevil us endlessly, in one variant form or another. As scientists labor to catch it, comprehend it, and control it, with their high-tech tools and methods, the virus finds ways of escape.

In his 2023 book The Heartbeat of the Wild: Dispatches From Landscapes of Wonder, Peril, and Hope, Quammen journeys to places where civilization meets raw nature and explores the challenge of balancing the needs of both.

This event takes place Malibu City Hall, 23825 Stuart Ranch Road, Malibu. RSVPs are required. Register online or call Malibu Library at 310.456.6438.