The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “books”

Urville: An Autistic Savant’s Remarkable Imaginary City, 20 Years in the Making
Urville: An Autistic Savant’s Remarkable Imaginary City, 20 Years in the Making

A rare glimpse of the extreme frontiers of human ability and imagination.

read article

Guitar Zero: A Neuroscientist Debunks the Myth of “Music Instinct” and Learns to Play
Guitar Zero: A Neuroscientist Debunks the Myth of “Music Instinct” and Learns to Play

On nature, nurture, and the neural pathways of possibility.

read article

The Bomb and the General: Umberto Eco’s Vintage Semiotic Children’s Book About Peace and Environmental Wakefulness
The Bomb and the General: Umberto Eco’s Vintage Semiotic Children’s Book About Peace and Environmental Wakefulness

How symbols become symbols, or what keeping atoms in harmony has to do with language acquisition.

read article

E. B. White on Why Brevity Is Not the Gold Standard for Style
E. B. White on Why Brevity Is Not the Gold Standard for Style

“Writing is not an exercise in excision, it’s a journey into sound.”

read article

A Wordle Anatomy of Gary Stheyngart Blurbs
A Wordle Anatomy of Gary Stheyngart Blurbs

Mapping a catalogue of promiscuous praise.

read article

Richard Feynman’s Mischievous Nobel Prize Wager
Richard Feynman’s Mischievous Nobel Prize Wager

Fifteen dollars of irreverence and honor, or how to avoid “occupational disease.”

read article

This Will Make You Smarter: 151 Big Thinkers Each Pick a Concept to Enhance Your Cognitive Toolkit
This Will Make You Smarter: 151 Big Thinkers Each Pick a Concept to Enhance Your Cognitive Toolkit

The importance of “the umwelt,” or why failure and uncertainty are essential for science and life.

read article

The Quantum Universe: Why All That Can Happen Does Happen
The Quantum Universe: Why All That Can Happen Does Happen

What Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has to do with the science of paper and the root of the human condition.

read article

How McLuhan, Agel, and Fiore Created a New Visual Vernacular for the Information Age
How McLuhan, Agel, and Fiore Created a New Visual Vernacular for the Information Age

The rise of the experimental paperback and how ‘typophotography’ paved the information superhighway.

read article

A Brief History of the To-Do List and the Psychology of Its Success
A Brief History of the To-Do List and the Psychology of Its Success

On reconciling the fussy with the fuzzy, or what Benjamin Franklin has to do with Drew Carey.

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)