Read The Emperor of All Maladies

Mukherjee's intimate history of heredity, from Mendel's peas to CRISPR.

The woman whose cells, taken without consent in 1951, are still alive in every lab.

Why Eurasia conquered the rest: geography, crops and animals rather than people; Diamond's Pulitzer.

Atul Gawande on what medicine gets wrong about dying, and what a good end looks like.

Matthew Walker on what eight hours do and what six hours cost.

Hofstadter on self-reference in logic, art and music, and where minds come from; the Pulitzer nobody finishes.

Five panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and the five lives they were sewn for.

The first month of the First World War day by day; Tuchman's Pulitzer that Kennedy read during the missile crisis.