James Nestor

James Nestor is an author and journalist who has written for Outside, Scientific American, Dwell, National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Men's Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, and others. His 2020 nonfiction book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, was an international bestseller, debuting on the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists and spending 18 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers in its first year of release. Breath won the award for Best General Nonfiction Book of 2020 by the American Society of Journalists and Authors and was a finalist for the Royal Society Science Book Prize. Breath was translated into more than 35 languages in 2022. Early life Nestor was born in Tustin, California, a suburb in Orange County. He described his upbringing as “lower-upper-middle class." Nestor was the youngest of two siblings. His father was a US Air Force pilot and instructor who later worked as an electrical engineer for navigational equipment of nuclear submarines. His mother was a homemaker. Nestor recounted the culture of the suburbs of southern California as being "the opposite of hippy, peace, dream catchers, flip-flops, and all that." At 14, Nestor formed a straight edge punk rock band with neighboring boys inspired by the burgeoning music scene of Orange County in the 1980's. He played a three-quarters scale South Korean-made Cort bass guitar that his brother had bought at a thrift store but never used. The band was called Care Unit. The band released a self-produced demo cassette tape and appeared on the compilation record album, "Another Shot for Bracken" (Positive Force Records). After 18 years living in Tustin in the same house with “the same phone number, the same phone,” Nestor moved to northern California to study literature and art, eventually earning a Master of Arts in English and a minor in art history at a university he described as “not really worth mentioning.” Career Nestor has written essays and feature articles for Outside, Scientific American, Dwell, National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Men's Journal, Surfer’s Journal, BBC, Reader’s Digest, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, and others.