University of Chicago Press

How Life Works

Philip Ball

The gene-as-blueprint story is wrong, and Ball’s argument is that biology has known it for a while without saying so out loud. The human genome came in at around 20,000 genes, fewer than a water flea, and it turned out…

The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands

Huw Lewis-Jones

Maps of places that don’t exist and essays by the writers who made them. Treasure Island, Middle-earth, Narnia, Earthsea, Winnie-the-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood, Discworld, and plenty more, reproduced large. Philip Pullman, Robert Macfarlane, Frances Hardinge, Cressida Cowell, David Mitchell, Joanne…