He played a three-quarters scale South Korean-made Cort bass guitar that his brother had bought at a thrift store but never used. 'Īt 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.

Nestor recounted the culture of the suburbs of southern California as being 'the opposite of hippy, peace, dream catchers, flip-flops, and all that. His father was a US Air Force pilot and instructor who later worked as an electrical engineer for navigational equipment of nuclear submarines. He described his upbringing as “ lower-upper-middle class.' Nestor was the youngest of two siblings. Nestor was born in Tustin, California, a suburb in Orange County. Breath was translated into more than 35 languages in 2022. 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. 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. 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.

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