We are excited to welcome back David Quammen and Betsy Gaines Quammen to discuss their new books. Quammen's most recent title, Heartbeat of the Wild, is a collection of essays from two decades as a National Geographic correspondent, exploring what happens when civilization meets raw nature and the challenge of balancing the needs of both. Gaines Quammen's latest book, True West, challenges the many myths of the West and explores how they cloud our perceptions today.

David Quammen is an author and journalist whose books include “The Heartbeat of the Wild,” “Breathless,” “The Tangled Tree,” “Spillover,” and “The Song of the Dodo.” His writing focuses on science, history of science, and the relationships of humans to landscape and biological diversity. He has also published short nonfiction in magazines such as The New Yorker, National Geographic, Harper’s, Outside, Esquire, The Atlantic, Powder, and Rolling Stone. 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. His books have received various awards, and Breathless in 2022 was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and writer. She received a PhD from Montana State University where she studied religion, history and the philosophy of science. Her dissertation focused on Mormon history and the roots of armed public land conflicts occurring in the United States. She is fascinated at how religious views shape relationships to landscape. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, and the History News Network. She is the author of “American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, and Public Lands in the West” and “True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America.”

The Quammens shares a home in Bozeman, Montana, with three giant Russian wolfhounds, a cross-eyed cat, and a lanky rescue python.