intertwined audiobook is out

I just discovered that my latest book, Intertwined is already available as an audiobook, from Tantor Media. Last I heard was that the audio rights were sold last summer.

Glad to hear from the sample clip they found a British narrator for this (Mike Cooper) and an actual human, just before AI gobbles up everything. Sounds good to me, even though I'm not sure I would want to have 12 hours worth of my own words read back at me.

Anyways, if you would like to listen to Intertwined, now you can!

There is also an ebook version as expensive as the hardback, but no news yet on a paperback.

intertwined

My new book, exploring how all life on Earth is connected to everything else, is out today:

Intertwined
From Insects to Icebergs
by Michael Gross
Johns Hopkins University Press
15. October 2024
424 pages
ISBN 9781421449975
Hardcover RRP £27.50 / $32.95

It can now be ordered from the publisher's website or from wherever else you get your books (eg from Oxford's very own Blackwells). I understand that an audiobook version is also in the making, slightly scary thought, but as long as I don't have to do the reading out loud, it's all good.

I prepared a magazine feature based on the introduction of the book, which came out yesterday in The Scotsman magazine. Here's a snippet:

I have found and made many connections over the years and have broadened my interests from the physical sciences into ecology and environment issues. Increasingly, I became aware that ecology is all about how in the living world everything is connected to everything else. Beyond the predator-prey relations of the food web, there are multiple ways in which species shape their environment and create opportunities for others. And this web of connections operates across a vast range of different scales from the molecular interactions (related to my background in biochemistry) to global cycles of important chemical elements like nitrogen and carbon. For instance, microscopically small cyanobacteria were responsible for giving our planet an atmosphere rich in oxygen.

Ecology is a relatively young concept, with the term coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866. Many of these crucial connections are only beginning to be explored by science, although human activities have already started to destroy them. For instance, whales, sea birds, migrating fish like salmon, and bears are all part of a global pump that transports nutrients uphill, against the flow direction dictated by gravity and the hydrological cycle. Scientists only discovered this connection within the last few years. By this time, its capacity to cycle nutrients was already severely reduced, not least by the industrialised whaling of the 20th century, which was only stopped just in time to avert extinction of the species targeted. Hydroelectric dams blocking salmon runs and the decimation of big beasts like bears by hunters and habitat loss also helped to disrupt this nutrient pump.

And here's the table of contents:

Introduction: Everything is connected
Chapter 1. Plants and their little helpers
Chapter 2. Fantastic animals
Chapter 3. Insects rule the world
Chapter 4. Looking after our forests
Chapter 5. This time, the asteroid is us
Chapter 6. Save our seas
Chapter 7. Living with animals
Chapter 8. Listen to nature
Chapter 9. Animals shaping the environment
Chapter 10. Life in the times of climate change
Chapter 11. Our shared burden of disease
Chapter 12. The Anthropocene and beyond

a book is born

The publishers told me this week that first copies of my new book have arrived at their offices, and on checking up I see it can now be pre-ordered from their website as well. So here are the full details now:

Intertwined
From Insects to Icebergs
by Michael Gross
Johns Hopkins University Press
15. October 2024
424 pages
ISBN 9781421449975
Hardcover $32.95

Also available as an e-book for the same price, ISBN: 9781421449982

watch this space for excerpts and further horn-tooting ...

ecology book coming soon

New book alert!

Over the last 13 years, as I have been writing a feature for (almost) every issue of Current Biology, the focus of my writing work gravitated towards topics that could be described as ecology in the broadest sense, ranging from microbial interactions to global nutrient cycles and also including the fringes of ecology such as human interference in nature, soundscape ecology, behavioural ecology etc.

True to my ancient motto "Only connect!" I was often attracted to these topics by the satisfaction of uncovering how everything is connected to everything else. Over time, more than 300 features have piled up and grown into a heavily connected and crosslinked body of texts. Even though the vast majority of these (everything older than 12 months) are openly accessible to all, I fear that not many people will click their way through these.

Therefore, I attempted to remix some of the lessons I have learned in these years into book format. The resulting 400 page doorstopper is now on track to be published on October 15 by Johns Hopkins University Press (who have also published Astrobiology in 3 editions over the last 18 years). So expect more plugs, excerpts, blatant advertising, as the date approches. Here, as a teaser, I'll just share a glimpse of the lovely cover (and thereby also reveal the title):

Cover of
Intertwined
From Insects to Icebergs
by Michael Gross
Johns Hopkins University Press October 2024