Right now there are two books at Andrew Knoll’s bedside. Knoll, author of Life on a Young Planet (Princeton University Press) and Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University, is working his way through Umberto Eco’s Baudolino (Secker & Warburg, 2002). It is “Eco’s latest riff on the Middle Ages: in my mind’s eye, I see him winking at those of us who study the past.”
His other bedtime read is Natasha’s Dance by Orlando Figes (Penguin, 2002). It is, he says, an engaging history of Russian culture, an interest prompted by his visits to Moscow.
“In the guilty pleasure department,” he says he…
