My Life in Middlemarch

One pivotal book can contour a whole life, if encountered at just the right moment.  So it was for Mead and Middlemarch.  Her triumph here is to make the reader care about George Eliot’s masterpiece as much as Mead does, and recognize the broader...

Friendly Microbes

February 14: “[A] scientific consensus is growing: that only by understanding the symbiotic aspects of our long-standing relationship with microbes can we find lasting solutions to infectious disease…”  

My Cruciverbal Life

Grab a stool. Yep, I finished it that fast. How? Well, you’d be good at crosswords too, if you’d lived my life. For instance: How do I know that a small newt is called an EFT? Believe it or not, when I was very young, I used to play...

My Cruciverbial Life

Grab a stool. Yep, I finished it that fast. How? Well, you’d be good at crosswords too, if you’d lived my life. For instance: How do I know that a small newt is called an EFT? Believe it or not, when I was very young, I used to play...

Chris West

The British historian takes us across the sea, via three great journeys into England’s past.