Maria Popova once again illuminates how science and poetry have reckoned with “the bewilderment of being alive” while reconnoitering truths of the body, soul, spirit, and space, all through the intertwining loves, lives, and labors of visionaries like Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Ruth Benedict, and others. Popova writes brilliant, fluid, lively nonfiction—like floating down a river of science, poetry, history, and stars.
Traversal by Maria Popova, (List Price: $36, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 9780374616410, February 2026)
Reviewed by Megan Bell, The Underground Bookshop in Carrollton, Georgia