—What I Am Reading Now Department: The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life

Montana is home to one of the world's great writers about science, David Quammen.

I have always felt that the smartest people are those who can take an important and complex subject and make it accessible to a non-specialist. By this standard, Quammen is brilliant. His latest, The Tangled Tree, does not disappoint.

It was reviewed in Science, one of the world's two most prestigious journals of general science, on 7 August 2018. In language rarely seen in a Science book review, The Tangled Tree is described as a "page-turner," and a "delightful read." The reviewer says, "this book is meant to be widely read and communicates the process of scientific inquiry as effectively as it does the results of the inquiry." Many other reviewers in the general press use much the same language to describe this book.

David was one of the first authors to present at This House of Books, in 2016, and this year we were able to pick up a stack of signed books from him at his home.