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Section 09 of 09 8 essays · Spring 2026

Book Review.

Long reads on long books — fiction and nonfiction, considered slowly.

Section editor
Naomi Kessel
The slow read deserves slow company. We review the books that matter — fiction, science, and the long, patient nonfiction that does not make the news.
Latest
The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human cover
Review · Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

A natural history of the cell — the smallest unit of life — and a look at how cellular medicine (CAR-T, stem cells, gene editing) is reshaping what medicine can do.

More in Book Review
02
Review · Venki Ramakrishnan

Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality

A Nobel Prize-winning biologist turns his eye on the science of ageing — why we age, why we die, and whether biology might one day change t…

03
Review · Anil Ananthaswamy

Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI

A rigorous but accessible tour of the mathematics that makes AI work — from gradient descent and backpropagation to transformers — written …

04
Review · Georgia Ede, MD

Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind

A Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist's evidence-based case that diet — particularly removing ultra-processed foods, seed oils, and ex…

05
Review · Christopher M. Palmer, MD

Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health

A Harvard psychiatrist argues that mental disorders — depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, anxiety — are metabolic disorders of the brain, r…

06
Review · Alex Riley

The Cure for Darkness: The Story of Depression and How We Treat It

A reported history of depression and its treatments — psychotherapy, antidepressants, ECT, ketamine, exercise, and the cultures that produc…

07
Review · Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Gene: An Intimate History

The story of the gene — from Mendel and Darwin to CRISPR — woven through the science, the history, and Mukherjees own family history of men…

08
Review · Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

A Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative history of cancer — from its earliest documented appearance in ancient Egypt to the cutting edge of immu…

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