A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerging human diseases.

"The real story of AIDS--how it originated with a virus in a chimpanzee, jumped to one human, and then infected more than 60 million people--is very different from what most of us think we know. Recent research has revealed dark surprises and yielded a radically new scenario of how AIDS began and spread. Excerpted and adapted from the book Spillover, with a new introduction by the author, Quammen's ... investigation tracks the virus from chimp populations...

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. In his landmark study, Darwin theorised that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. These ideas flew in the face of long-held beliefs and the book immediately became one of the most controversial scientific...