How do you date a text from roughly 8 B.C.E.? You track it like a geneticist. “Languages behave just extraordinarily like genes,” says Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at the… Read more »

“I wish I could still subscribe to the Death of the Author theories I glommed onto so readily in college,” writes Ryan Chapman at his blog Chapman/Chapman, but the author’s… Read more »

Thanks to everyone who took part in MobyLives’s Marginalia Contest (inspired by Sam Anderson’s “A Year in Maginalia” post at The Millions.) In an utterly subjective fashion, we’ve selected two of… Read more »

I was pleased and amused to see my hometown of Eureka, California show up in The New York Times this weekend. Amy Stewart, bestselling author of Wicked Plants and co-owner… Read more »

We’ve been wondering… who are you? The readers of MobyLives, we mean. Our theories are: 1. You are publishing industry wonks who like our hard-hitting exposes and clever commentary on… 2 / Read more »