Books

Immortality, Inc.: Renegade Science, Silicon Valley Billions, and the Quest to Live Forever

National Geographic, 2020

In this gripping narrative, journalist Chip Walter asks the question: can we live forever? To get the answers, Immortality, Inc. explores how a powerful group of scientists hope to stop human aging and cure death.

Billionaires are betting their fortunes on laboratory advances to prove aging can be stopped and that death cured. Researchers are delving into the mysteries of stem cells and the human genome, discovering what it means to grow old and how to stop those processes from happening. This isn't science fiction; it's real, and it will revolutionize our definitions of life and mortality.

Walter gains inside access to these remarkable scientists, delivering a book that weaves the visions of molecular biologist and Apple chairman Arthur Levinson, genomics entrepreneur Craig Venter, futurist Ray Kurzweil, rejuvenation trailblazer Aubrey de Grey, and stem cell expert Robert Hariri, and unmasks their thoughts about life, death, aging, and the future of the human race.

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PURCHASE BELOW … You can also buy a signed copy at our Vagabond Adventure Store here.

Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

Bloomsbury Books

The New York Times Book Review,  called  Last Ape Standing “a lively journey… that takes an antic delight in the triumphal adaptations and terrifying near misses of human evolution.” The  New Yorker called it “engaging” and “fascinating.”  Futurist Ray Kurzweil said, “Read it! You’ll never see yourself or anyone else the same way.” And  Booklist called it “captivating, informative, exceptionally well-written and accessible.”

Over the past 150 years scientists have discovered evidence that at least twenty-seven species of humans evolved on planet Earth. These weren't simply variations on apes, but upright-walking humans who lived side by side, competing, cooperating, sometimes even mating with our direct ancestors. Why did the line of ancient humans who eventually evolved into us survive when the others were shown the evolutionary door?

The book draws on new scientific discoveries to tell the fascinating tale of how our survival was linked to our ancestors being born more prematurely than others. That resulted in uniquely long and rich childhoods that, in turn, led to a new kind of mind; one that made us unusually resourceful and self-aware in ways that no other animal is.

Last Ape also explores the mysterious "others" who evolved with us-the Neanderthals of Europe, the "Hobbits" of Indonesia, the Denisovans of Siberia and the Red Deer Cave people of China who died off only eleven thousand years ago.

In the end, Last Ape Standing investigates why we do, feel, and think the things we do as a species, and as people-good and bad, creative and cunning, heroic and conflicted.

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PURCHASE BELOW … Or, a digital version of Last Ape is now available for $4.99.

Thumbs, Toes, and Tears: And Other Traits That Make Us Human

Walker Books

The fascinating evolutionary links between six seemingly unremarkable traits that make us the very remarkable creatures we are.  Thumbs, Toes and Tears received great reviews:  Publisher’s Weekly  hailed it as “fascinating and superbly written,” while  Kirkus Reviews said, “Walter narrates with flair and enthusiasm.”  

Countless behaviors separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, but all of them can be traced one way or another to six traits that are unique to the human race―our big toe, our opposable thumb, our oddly shaped pharynx, and our ability to laugh, kiss, and cry. At first glance these may not seem to be connected but each marks a fork in the evolutionary road where we went one way and the rest of the animal kingdom went another. Thumbs opens small passageways on the peculiar geography of the human heart and mind, and explains why our brains grew so large and complex, why we find one another sexually attractive, how toolmaking laid the mental groundwork for language, why we care about what others think, and how we became the creature that laughs and cries and falls in love.

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PURCHASE BELOW FROM AMAZON… OR a digital version of Thumbs is now available here for $3.99. Or buy a signed hardback copy here.

I’m Working on That: A Trek from Science Fiction to Science Fact

Simon and Schuster, 2002

Over the past five decades, Star Trek has become a global phenomenon. Its celebration of mankind's technical achievements and positive view of the future have earned it an enduring place in the world's psyche. It has inspired countless viewers to become scientists, inventors, and astronauts. And they, in turn, have wondered if they could make even a little piece of Star Trek real in their own lifetime. As the great phycist Stephen Hawking put it when he saw a plywood, plaster and plastic set that represented the ship's warp engines, "I'm working on that."

As in his missions aboard the fictional Starship Enterprise, William Shatner, the actor who is Captain James T. Kirk, and his co-author, Chip Walter, take us on an adventure to discover the people who are working on the future we will all share. Whether its exploring warp drive, robots, immortality or being “beamed up,” some of the world’s top scientists investigate the realms of what was once considered improbable and show how it just might be possible (or already exists).

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Space Age

Random House, 1992 (as William J. Walter)

The exploration of space represents a shattering cultural shift, like the invention of agriculture or the arrival of the industrial revolution. It also marks a biological leap as important as the wriggling of the first fish onto land or the passage of the first primate from the jungle to the savannah. Such adventures inevitably foreshadow momentous change. But how is it that the human race has arrived at a time in its history where the force of its curiosity has become so great that it has carried us beyond our home world?

Space Age is the companion book to the extraordinary six part PBS television series produced by WQED/Pittsburgh in association with the National Academy of Sciences. Written by journalist and filmmaker Chip Walter, it takes readers on an exciting and unexpected journey into the past, and maps out strange and surprising possibilities for the future. It explains how the space age has revolutionized the way we work and communicate; has radically shifted our view of our own world and provided us with the most powerful possible tools for reversing the momentum of our planet’s, and our own, destruction.

It begins by telling the little-known stories of the extraordinary rocket pioneers who made the dream of exploring the stars possible: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a deaf, small-town Russian schoolteacher who in 1898 first calculated how to launch a rocket beyond Earth. Robert Goddard, the secretive and determined New England physics professor, who had the personality of a parson, but the mind of a mad adventurer. And Hermann Oberth, a high school mathematics teacher from Transylvania. His failed effort to build a rocket for a publicity stunt in the 1920s became the first in a long line of rockets, which led to the ship that ultimately sent American astronauts to the moon 40 years later — the Saturn V booster.

Space Age also looks into the future: The tremendous challenges of mounting a human mission to Mars. (Can any crew survive the trip?) The unexpected possibilities of returning to and settling the moon. (Will lunar resorts be the place to go in the 21st century?) And the surprising evolutionary possibilities that will follow in the wake of interplanetary and intergalactic exploration. Will we clone new Earths, transforming the solar system into a kind of cosmic rain forest, brimming with new species of plants and animals and intelligent beings, all springing from common terrestrial ancestors?

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