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Traversal
From the Marginalian creator and bestselling author Maria Popova, a bold exploration of what makes a meaningful life.
"It's difficult to imagine a better narrator than Natascha McElhone for this...McElhone's soft voice and poetic cadence guide listeners into the personal and professional lives of groundbreaking women..." —Kirkus on Figuring (Earphones Award winner)
What is life?
What is death?
What makes a body a person?
What makes a planet a world?
In Traversal, Maria Popova illuminates our various instruments of reckoning with the bewilderment of being alive—our telescopes and our treatises, our postulates and our poems—through the intertwined lives, loves, and legacies of visionaries both celebrated and sidelined by history, people born into the margins of their time and place who lived to write the Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Fanny Wright, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Marie Tharp, Alfred Wegener, Humphry Davy, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead. Woven throughout their stories are other threads—the first global scientific collaboration, the Irish potato famine, the decoding of the insulin molecule, the invention of the bicycle, how nature creates blue—to make the tapestry of meaning more elaborate yet clearer as the book advances, converging on the ultimate question of what makes life alive and worth living.
By turns epic and intimate—as concerned with the physical laws binding atoms into molecules as with the psychic forces binding us to one other—Traversal explores the universe between cells and souls to reveal the world, and our lives, in a dazzling new light.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
"It's difficult to imagine a better narrator than Natascha McElhone for this...McElhone's soft voice and poetic cadence guide listeners into the personal and professional lives of groundbreaking women..." —Kirkus on Figuring (Earphones Award winner)
What is life?
What is death?
What makes a body a person?
What makes a planet a world?
In Traversal, Maria Popova illuminates our various instruments of reckoning with the bewilderment of being alive—our telescopes and our treatises, our postulates and our poems—through the intertwined lives, loves, and legacies of visionaries both celebrated and sidelined by history, people born into the margins of their time and place who lived to write the Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Fanny Wright, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Marie Tharp, Alfred Wegener, Humphry Davy, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead. Woven throughout their stories are other threads—the first global scientific collaboration, the Irish potato famine, the decoding of the insulin molecule, the invention of the bicycle, how nature creates blue—to make the tapestry of meaning more elaborate yet clearer as the book advances, converging on the ultimate question of what makes life alive and worth living.
By turns epic and intimate—as concerned with the physical laws binding atoms into molecules as with the psychic forces binding us to one other—Traversal explores the universe between cells and souls to reveal the world, and our lives, in a dazzling new light.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Audible Audio
Published February 17, 2026
123 people are currently reading
2797 people want to read
About the author
Maria Popova
36 books1,803 followersMaria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org), which is included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials. She hosts The Universe in Verse—an annual charitable celebration of science through poetry—at the interdisciplinary cultural center Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 5, 2026
TRAVERSAL
@mariapopova
@fsgbooks
“We feel first and think second, then spend our lives contorting to invert the order, sublimating emotion to reason, only to find ourselves made smaller and less alive by the flight from feeling.”
Traversal is a true work of humanism, a beautifully rendered literary Fantasia that strips away the false barriers our education systems have illusioned in place among chemistry and philosophy and physics and literature.
Illuminating the successes and blunders of sung and unsung figures who have brought art to science and science to art, Popova traverses back and forth through the centuries tracing lines of thought carried through literature, poetry, scientific method and idea, and shows us how we should have been thinking of, in the same vein, Mary Shelley and Frederick Douglass and those who have illustrated insulin with xray and painted blue the mountain valleys at the bottom of the ocean, all along.
As Popova follows the line from Shelley’s Frankenstein, a man creating a monster he has no way of taming, to Dorothy Hodgkin illuminating molecular structure by pioneering the field of xray crystallography, to Rosalind Franklin who did the major lifting in delineating the structure of DNA,RNA, & viruses—all the structures that allow for the possibility of life—we see that, by far, it has been women taking risk and taming science for illumination and good, through fierce work outlined with ethic and ethics, while it is me who tend to headline the atomic bombs, the stolen Nobels, the Frankensteins.
As Popova painstakingly but remarkably renders biography of looming historical figures and tastemakers, Wollstonecraft, all the Shelleys and those they loved and interacted with, she dutifully and effectively relays emotion that draws in the reader who, not having a clue what is coming next in this mammoth of a masterwork, invests every single moment nearly equally and with interest because of Poppva’s masterful evocation of emotion and summoning of life from studied journals and diaries.
If everyone thought even an ounce closer to the way Popova thinks of the world, or even took a single page of this book’s questioning to heart, or understood at a deep level even a tenth of everything she discusses here, I think perhaps the world would logarithmically improve, instantly. I don’t mean this as some elevated intelligence quotient elitism—just that if education were accessible and ACCESSED by everyone, the ability to see past propagandas and pseudosciences would be so much simpler for those of us who fall for them or have fallen for them.
This is a remarkable historical work for every reader.
Book of the year. 🥇
@mariapopova
@fsgbooks
“We feel first and think second, then spend our lives contorting to invert the order, sublimating emotion to reason, only to find ourselves made smaller and less alive by the flight from feeling.”
Traversal is a true work of humanism, a beautifully rendered literary Fantasia that strips away the false barriers our education systems have illusioned in place among chemistry and philosophy and physics and literature.
Illuminating the successes and blunders of sung and unsung figures who have brought art to science and science to art, Popova traverses back and forth through the centuries tracing lines of thought carried through literature, poetry, scientific method and idea, and shows us how we should have been thinking of, in the same vein, Mary Shelley and Frederick Douglass and those who have illustrated insulin with xray and painted blue the mountain valleys at the bottom of the ocean, all along.
As Popova follows the line from Shelley’s Frankenstein, a man creating a monster he has no way of taming, to Dorothy Hodgkin illuminating molecular structure by pioneering the field of xray crystallography, to Rosalind Franklin who did the major lifting in delineating the structure of DNA,RNA, & viruses—all the structures that allow for the possibility of life—we see that, by far, it has been women taking risk and taming science for illumination and good, through fierce work outlined with ethic and ethics, while it is me who tend to headline the atomic bombs, the stolen Nobels, the Frankensteins.
As Popova painstakingly but remarkably renders biography of looming historical figures and tastemakers, Wollstonecraft, all the Shelleys and those they loved and interacted with, she dutifully and effectively relays emotion that draws in the reader who, not having a clue what is coming next in this mammoth of a masterwork, invests every single moment nearly equally and with interest because of Poppva’s masterful evocation of emotion and summoning of life from studied journals and diaries.
If everyone thought even an ounce closer to the way Popova thinks of the world, or even took a single page of this book’s questioning to heart, or understood at a deep level even a tenth of everything she discusses here, I think perhaps the world would logarithmically improve, instantly. I don’t mean this as some elevated intelligence quotient elitism—just that if education were accessible and ACCESSED by everyone, the ability to see past propagandas and pseudosciences would be so much simpler for those of us who fall for them or have fallen for them.
This is a remarkable historical work for every reader.
Book of the year. 🥇
February 28, 2026
Popova's writing style takes you into other people without a warning. She opens a window to let you look through, and you suddenly find yourself sipping hot chocolate under a blanket, inside this person's life, watching. She then moves to someone else, the door closing gently behind you, only to land back onto their balcony later on, watching them leave the house from a new perspective.
I liked this book slightly less than Figuring, simply because I was more taken with the lives of those people than with the lives of the people in this book, but the research, the insight and the beautiful prose, barely resisting becoming poetry, are more than worth the price of admission.
I liked this book slightly less than Figuring, simply because I was more taken with the lives of those people than with the lives of the people in this book, but the research, the insight and the beautiful prose, barely resisting becoming poetry, are more than worth the price of admission.
March 10, 2026
Have you ever read a book which feels like it was written just for you? That is what Traversal is for me. The subject-matter. The narrative meanderings. The observations. All of it feels like it was created for a very specific reader - me! That makes it hard for me to guess how other people will approach the book or react to it. It is tailored to my tastes so specifically, I am not sure how it translates to the general reading public. I hope everyone loves it and talks about it endlessly on the socials and it becomes a cultural touchstone because I think it is that deep, that interesting, worthy of not just reading but study. I would love to teach a semester class on it, where we also read adjacent books because it is a book to be discussed with others and in conversation with other works. While it is brilliant on its own, it shines even brighter in context. Prior familiarity with the topics isn't necessary but it does heighten the enjoyment.
In my review of an earlier book by Maria Popova I wrote, "My only complaint about this book is I wish it was 1,000 pages long." In Traversal, I almost got that wish! This is a long and twisty exploration of astronomy and art and the complicated people who do both. It is endlessly fascinating. Never boring. Always making connections I would like to think I would make myself but know I probably wouldn't without someone pointing them out to me. This is the type of book I love. It reminds me of Rebecca Solnit in the way it weaves different threads together to make a cohesive tapestry. Traversal is about history, about the journey we have taken to get from there to here. It is about science and the narratives we create out of our understanding. It is the story of our world told by focusing on particular people. Part history book, part science explanation, part biography, Traversal is more than the sum of its parts. Thank you to Maria Popova for the time and effort which obviously went into writing the book, Natascha McElhone for the competent narration, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the audioARC.
In my review of an earlier book by Maria Popova I wrote, "My only complaint about this book is I wish it was 1,000 pages long." In Traversal, I almost got that wish! This is a long and twisty exploration of astronomy and art and the complicated people who do both. It is endlessly fascinating. Never boring. Always making connections I would like to think I would make myself but know I probably wouldn't without someone pointing them out to me. This is the type of book I love. It reminds me of Rebecca Solnit in the way it weaves different threads together to make a cohesive tapestry. Traversal is about history, about the journey we have taken to get from there to here. It is about science and the narratives we create out of our understanding. It is the story of our world told by focusing on particular people. Part history book, part science explanation, part biography, Traversal is more than the sum of its parts. Thank you to Maria Popova for the time and effort which obviously went into writing the book, Natascha McElhone for the competent narration, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the audioARC.
March 20, 2026
The search for truth demands unselfing, periscopes outward, casts light. The hunger for truth is the source from which all of our quickenings, reckonings, and episodes of creative restlessness arise, the hunger to which Walt Whitman would give voice a century after Cook: Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts, The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars, The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped, Wonders as of those countries—the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may be, Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects, Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand provided for a handful of space, which I extend my arm and half enclose with my hand, That containing the start of each and all—the virtue, the germs of all.
Annie Dillard + Proust + deep reverence for history and overlooked innovators = this book. So dense, but still so lovely. I don’t mind dense, it is such a mindfulness exercise to lose yourself in a book and savor it. It was just really hard to keep all the threads the author was weaving in a coherent line. There is no living thinker like Popova, I swear, who makes all these gorgeous connections between history and philosophy and poetry and science and distills it all into love and wonder. Definitely a book to come back to again and again. I think they should teach college courses on it.
Plus I love, love, love learning new words! Orrery: mechanical model of the solar system, or unusual uses of language like “the relationship taffied for two years as the two separated and reunited, separated and reunited.”
Half a century after Cook’s Transit of Venus expedition, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus set its century ablaze with these eternal questions. In the next epoch and on the next scale of understanding, they would deal not with animating an assemblage of body parts into a living being but with animating chemical molecules into living cells, animating computational algorithms into analogues of consciousness, animating a planet of atoms into a worldwide übermind of bits. But they would be the same questions, haunted by the enduring metaphor at the heart of the novel’s admonition.
BIGGER THAN MANHATTAN, Earth’s largest living organism sways in the surf south of Australia: Posidonia australis—a species of seagrass that, unable to flower, clones itself. Older than mathematics and the written word, it has been cloning itself since before the pyramids were built—a kind of immortality.
Between the scale of atoms and the scale of stars, between the time of mayflies and the time of mountains, we exist as proteins lit up with purpose, matter yearning for meaning on a planet capable of trees and tenderness, a world on which every living thing abides by the same dumb resilience through which we rose from the oceans to compose the Benedictus and to build the bomb.
What is life? What is death? What makes a body a person? What makes a planet a world? Over and over, we discover that it is all one question, that there might just be a single answer: love. Our love of knowledge. Our love of mystery. Our love of beauty transcending the vanity of ambition. Our love of truth prevailing over the howling hunger for power. Our love for each other—each of us a festival of particles and probabilities, a living question, a perishable miracle composed of chemistry and culture, of passion and chance.
In the lectures Fanny Wright delivered at her Hall of Science, she inveighed against the segregation of knowledge as a self-crippling of society and the individual mind—one that renders us easy prey to manipulation: While each part and parcel of human learning remains confined to its ostensible professors, the public at large has no means of estimating its real value, nor the possessor himself of understanding all its bearings and relations, distinguishing its truths, or detecting its fallacies … All the real sciences are so related and conjoined, that no individual can thoroughly understand any one, without some general acquaintance with all … It is in the absence of this general acquaintance, that false knowledge, pretended science, erroneous institutions, unwise expenditures, absurd customs, and every species of fraud and folly obtain among men, and are handed down, from parent to child, like the heirlooms of aristocracy in feudal Europe.
Annie Dillard + Proust + deep reverence for history and overlooked innovators = this book. So dense, but still so lovely. I don’t mind dense, it is such a mindfulness exercise to lose yourself in a book and savor it. It was just really hard to keep all the threads the author was weaving in a coherent line. There is no living thinker like Popova, I swear, who makes all these gorgeous connections between history and philosophy and poetry and science and distills it all into love and wonder. Definitely a book to come back to again and again. I think they should teach college courses on it.
Plus I love, love, love learning new words! Orrery: mechanical model of the solar system, or unusual uses of language like “the relationship taffied for two years as the two separated and reunited, separated and reunited.”
Half a century after Cook’s Transit of Venus expedition, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus set its century ablaze with these eternal questions. In the next epoch and on the next scale of understanding, they would deal not with animating an assemblage of body parts into a living being but with animating chemical molecules into living cells, animating computational algorithms into analogues of consciousness, animating a planet of atoms into a worldwide übermind of bits. But they would be the same questions, haunted by the enduring metaphor at the heart of the novel’s admonition.
BIGGER THAN MANHATTAN, Earth’s largest living organism sways in the surf south of Australia: Posidonia australis—a species of seagrass that, unable to flower, clones itself. Older than mathematics and the written word, it has been cloning itself since before the pyramids were built—a kind of immortality.
Between the scale of atoms and the scale of stars, between the time of mayflies and the time of mountains, we exist as proteins lit up with purpose, matter yearning for meaning on a planet capable of trees and tenderness, a world on which every living thing abides by the same dumb resilience through which we rose from the oceans to compose the Benedictus and to build the bomb.
What is life? What is death? What makes a body a person? What makes a planet a world? Over and over, we discover that it is all one question, that there might just be a single answer: love. Our love of knowledge. Our love of mystery. Our love of beauty transcending the vanity of ambition. Our love of truth prevailing over the howling hunger for power. Our love for each other—each of us a festival of particles and probabilities, a living question, a perishable miracle composed of chemistry and culture, of passion and chance.
In the lectures Fanny Wright delivered at her Hall of Science, she inveighed against the segregation of knowledge as a self-crippling of society and the individual mind—one that renders us easy prey to manipulation: While each part and parcel of human learning remains confined to its ostensible professors, the public at large has no means of estimating its real value, nor the possessor himself of understanding all its bearings and relations, distinguishing its truths, or detecting its fallacies … All the real sciences are so related and conjoined, that no individual can thoroughly understand any one, without some general acquaintance with all … It is in the absence of this general acquaintance, that false knowledge, pretended science, erroneous institutions, unwise expenditures, absurd customs, and every species of fraud and folly obtain among men, and are handed down, from parent to child, like the heirlooms of aristocracy in feudal Europe.
October 11, 2025
Rather than a collection of short stories, this book reads like a journey. Embark and follow the stream of thoughts, stories, scientific discoveries and relationships of historical figures from the XIXth and early XXth centuries.
Traversal should be read cover-to-cover. The titles of its 49 short chapters form an eerie "romantic" poem - a careful nod to Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley, whose lives are featured extensively in the book. Yes, you are signing up for more than 500 pages, but they are very easy to read. Short chapters follow each other with elegance. Each one focuses on a specific invention, a specific historical figure, or a specific event. It would be perfect for commuters: in 15 minutes, you can read a chapter and learn something interesting to talk about at the coffee machine.
I really liked that Maria Popova does not judge the people of the XIXth century with the logic and morality of our times. She captures the zeitgeist of the XIXth century and tries to convey the perspectives of each person, especially when their interests are not aligned. I really enjoyed reading through the extraordinary lives of Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Shelley. Despite trying to rebel against their families and their times, they were also a product of the period. What does it mean to be an innovator? How can one be a female intellectual in a time when women were considered as perpetual children, and when being beaten and raped by your husband was considered normal?
The powerful forces of scientifict innovation and art are often at odds with the sluggish evolution of morals. Traversal invites you to reflect on extraordinary times and influential people, but also on the daily lives of everyone who was just trying to survive through revolutions and famines.
Maria Propova provided me with a novel perspective on many big names of science (Lavoisier, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Humphry Davy...). It felt a lot like summer nights at my grandparent's summer house when I was a child. My grandfather was a physics researcher with an immense culture. My grandmother held a master's degree in geography and was also a voracious reader. They would tell a lot of stories, especially about the history of science. Reading this book is the closest I can get to spending a night with them - they are long dead.
Summary:
I truly liked Traversal. Probably not enough to give it 5 stars, but more like 4.5 rounded down. I learned a lot and definitely feel more grateful for being born at the end of the XXth century. As a woman and an engineer, my life would have been much more difficult just 100 years earlier. The odds are that I would not have had access to higher education at all.
Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of this book. I will read anything that FSG is kind enough to send me. They are such a fantastic editor.
Thank you Maria Popova for all those stories, told with the generosity, critical thinking and passion that only true scholars possess. I love how you connect all those historical figures between each other and with modern times.
Traversal should be read cover-to-cover. The titles of its 49 short chapters form an eerie "romantic" poem - a careful nod to Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley, whose lives are featured extensively in the book. Yes, you are signing up for more than 500 pages, but they are very easy to read. Short chapters follow each other with elegance. Each one focuses on a specific invention, a specific historical figure, or a specific event. It would be perfect for commuters: in 15 minutes, you can read a chapter and learn something interesting to talk about at the coffee machine.
I really liked that Maria Popova does not judge the people of the XIXth century with the logic and morality of our times. She captures the zeitgeist of the XIXth century and tries to convey the perspectives of each person, especially when their interests are not aligned. I really enjoyed reading through the extraordinary lives of Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Shelley. Despite trying to rebel against their families and their times, they were also a product of the period. What does it mean to be an innovator? How can one be a female intellectual in a time when women were considered as perpetual children, and when being beaten and raped by your husband was considered normal?
The powerful forces of scientifict innovation and art are often at odds with the sluggish evolution of morals. Traversal invites you to reflect on extraordinary times and influential people, but also on the daily lives of everyone who was just trying to survive through revolutions and famines.
Maria Propova provided me with a novel perspective on many big names of science (Lavoisier, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Humphry Davy...). It felt a lot like summer nights at my grandparent's summer house when I was a child. My grandfather was a physics researcher with an immense culture. My grandmother held a master's degree in geography and was also a voracious reader. They would tell a lot of stories, especially about the history of science. Reading this book is the closest I can get to spending a night with them - they are long dead.
Summary:
I truly liked Traversal. Probably not enough to give it 5 stars, but more like 4.5 rounded down. I learned a lot and definitely feel more grateful for being born at the end of the XXth century. As a woman and an engineer, my life would have been much more difficult just 100 years earlier. The odds are that I would not have had access to higher education at all.
Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of this book. I will read anything that FSG is kind enough to send me. They are such a fantastic editor.
Thank you Maria Popova for all those stories, told with the generosity, critical thinking and passion that only true scholars possess. I love how you connect all those historical figures between each other and with modern times.
March 24, 2026
{thank you to NetGalley for my copy of this audiobook!}
OK, this book was pretty outside my comfort zone and I was a bit overwhelmed when I started listening to it. But the more I listened, the more I started to follow along and get to know the people featured and I ended up really enjoying it and learning SO SO much. I initially rated it 4 stars, but the more I sat with it and the more I continued my own research on the subjects in the book, the more I realized this is a 5 star read.
As the book summary says, "Traversal is a book exploring the meaning of life through the intertwined stories of historical figures like Mary Shelley, Frederick Douglass, and Dorothy Hodgkin, examining themes of science, art, and human experience from the microscopic to the cosmic." It's a brilliantly written book and I'd love to learn more about the process the author Maria Popova took when writing this. How did she decide what and who to focus on?? It must have taken a tremendous amount of research and I can't even begin to estimate how long the writing process took.
As the title implies, the book is a journey across time, ideas, and people. It's not linear and you'll feel like you're wandering through time, meeting people, leaving them for a bit, coming back to them, etc. Sometimes you'll wonder why Popova is focusing on a specific person or idea, but you'll soon see that everything is very purposeful. I recently heard a billionaire man say that it's a very modern quality that people are introspective and that introspection hinders our drive for success. I challenge you to read this book filled with 19th and 20th century figures and argue they weren't extremely deep thinkers. Traversal is truly about how humans think, feel, and try to understand their existence and this has been happening forever.
I would say this wasn't an easy book for me at all times, but I don't think it's supposed to be. I feel like the same qualities that make the book brilliant also make it challenging. The long, winding sentences, and the constant shifting between subjects and time periods and the nonstop introduction to more and more "characters" can feel overwhelming. It's nothing if not an ambitious book and while it was great to listen to via audio, I feel like it's the kind of book where a tandem read would be perfect. I really wished I had a hard copy of the book to refer to while I was listening. When listening via audio, you really need to give it your full attention. The narrator is wonderful though and does make the book enjoyable to listen to.
My major sign that a nonfiction book has worked for me? When it encourages me to continue to research the topics it covers. Traversal did that for me 10-fold. How did I never learn about the year without a summer?? How did I not know so many of these details about Mary Shelley and her life and works?
If you're up for a bit of a challenge that will likely prove to be really rewarding, I highly recommend picking this book up!
OK, this book was pretty outside my comfort zone and I was a bit overwhelmed when I started listening to it. But the more I listened, the more I started to follow along and get to know the people featured and I ended up really enjoying it and learning SO SO much. I initially rated it 4 stars, but the more I sat with it and the more I continued my own research on the subjects in the book, the more I realized this is a 5 star read.
As the book summary says, "Traversal is a book exploring the meaning of life through the intertwined stories of historical figures like Mary Shelley, Frederick Douglass, and Dorothy Hodgkin, examining themes of science, art, and human experience from the microscopic to the cosmic." It's a brilliantly written book and I'd love to learn more about the process the author Maria Popova took when writing this. How did she decide what and who to focus on?? It must have taken a tremendous amount of research and I can't even begin to estimate how long the writing process took.
As the title implies, the book is a journey across time, ideas, and people. It's not linear and you'll feel like you're wandering through time, meeting people, leaving them for a bit, coming back to them, etc. Sometimes you'll wonder why Popova is focusing on a specific person or idea, but you'll soon see that everything is very purposeful. I recently heard a billionaire man say that it's a very modern quality that people are introspective and that introspection hinders our drive for success. I challenge you to read this book filled with 19th and 20th century figures and argue they weren't extremely deep thinkers. Traversal is truly about how humans think, feel, and try to understand their existence and this has been happening forever.
I would say this wasn't an easy book for me at all times, but I don't think it's supposed to be. I feel like the same qualities that make the book brilliant also make it challenging. The long, winding sentences, and the constant shifting between subjects and time periods and the nonstop introduction to more and more "characters" can feel overwhelming. It's nothing if not an ambitious book and while it was great to listen to via audio, I feel like it's the kind of book where a tandem read would be perfect. I really wished I had a hard copy of the book to refer to while I was listening. When listening via audio, you really need to give it your full attention. The narrator is wonderful though and does make the book enjoyable to listen to.
My major sign that a nonfiction book has worked for me? When it encourages me to continue to research the topics it covers. Traversal did that for me 10-fold. How did I never learn about the year without a summer?? How did I not know so many of these details about Mary Shelley and her life and works?
If you're up for a bit of a challenge that will likely prove to be really rewarding, I highly recommend picking this book up!
March 17, 2026
Traversal by Maria Popova is an always stimulating, sometimes frustrating, fascinating, fecund (maybe at times to a fault), whirling swirling kaleidoscope of a book that while it may occasionally exasperate, almost entirely keeps you fully joyfully immersed.
In her prologue, she tells us in all we do,
we go on searching for an organizing principle to fathom the ultimate questions: What is life? What is death? What makes a body a person? What makes a planet a world? Over and over, we discover that it is all one question, that there might just be a single answer: love. Our love of knowledge. Our love of mystery. Our love of beauty . . . Our love for each other—each of us a festival of particles and probabilities . . . of passion and chance.
It’s a lot to cover, and I’m not sure how “organized” it all is through her six-hundred pages. A thread, multiple threads run through for sure, and we return again and again to core points, so there is an organizing principle, but the topic is so vast, I’m not sure it always holds together, or doesn’t occasionally get stretched to near breaking. I am sure, however, that I didn’t really care, the book won me over so fully.
I’m not going to even attempt a summary as the book is long (600 pages) and has so many elements and moving parts that it would be a fool’s errand. Suffice to say that Popova moves through time, albeit not always in linear fashion, to present us a series of lives, including Captain Cook, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelly, Byron, Frederick Douglass, Whitman, astronomers Edmond Halley, and Natalie Batalha (leader of the Kepler project), chemists Antoine Lavoisier and Dorothy Crowfoot, Humphry Davy, and others. Many, many others. Some are directly connected to each other (the Shelleys obviously, and both to Byron), some lead one to another, some are influenced directly or indirectly, some are connected by an event (the transit of Venus for instance, or the ripple effect of an eruption in Indonesia), some by personality or their work or by a theme Popova is working through. It’s all fascinating and complex and following Popova’s threads is just joyfully stimulating and exciting. To see where she goes next. To see when she winds backward. To see how she pulls it all together. And even when she doesn’t do so entirely, the ambition and effort (and the writing) is all so impressive you just shrug swim ever deeper into her deepening, widening pool of knowledge and connection. Honestly, it has been a while since I’ve read a book whose intellectual breadth, depth, and originality so enthralled me. Highly recommended.
In her prologue, she tells us in all we do,
we go on searching for an organizing principle to fathom the ultimate questions: What is life? What is death? What makes a body a person? What makes a planet a world? Over and over, we discover that it is all one question, that there might just be a single answer: love. Our love of knowledge. Our love of mystery. Our love of beauty . . . Our love for each other—each of us a festival of particles and probabilities . . . of passion and chance.
It’s a lot to cover, and I’m not sure how “organized” it all is through her six-hundred pages. A thread, multiple threads run through for sure, and we return again and again to core points, so there is an organizing principle, but the topic is so vast, I’m not sure it always holds together, or doesn’t occasionally get stretched to near breaking. I am sure, however, that I didn’t really care, the book won me over so fully.
I’m not going to even attempt a summary as the book is long (600 pages) and has so many elements and moving parts that it would be a fool’s errand. Suffice to say that Popova moves through time, albeit not always in linear fashion, to present us a series of lives, including Captain Cook, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelly, Byron, Frederick Douglass, Whitman, astronomers Edmond Halley, and Natalie Batalha (leader of the Kepler project), chemists Antoine Lavoisier and Dorothy Crowfoot, Humphry Davy, and others. Many, many others. Some are directly connected to each other (the Shelleys obviously, and both to Byron), some lead one to another, some are influenced directly or indirectly, some are connected by an event (the transit of Venus for instance, or the ripple effect of an eruption in Indonesia), some by personality or their work or by a theme Popova is working through. It’s all fascinating and complex and following Popova’s threads is just joyfully stimulating and exciting. To see where she goes next. To see when she winds backward. To see how she pulls it all together. And even when she doesn’t do so entirely, the ambition and effort (and the writing) is all so impressive you just shrug swim ever deeper into her deepening, widening pool of knowledge and connection. Honestly, it has been a while since I’ve read a book whose intellectual breadth, depth, and originality so enthralled me. Highly recommended.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
5 stars
I just really appreciate that Maria Popova exists. Her work always feels thoughtful, comprehensive, and novel, and this most recent mega effort is one of the best examples of what she can REALLY do.
About a decade ago, I had one of the most incredible experiences of my life so far: seeing Marina Abramovic speak at City Arts & Lectures in San Francisco. My small group of fellow travelers - a sibling included - and I treated this like we were coming home to the coven because, let's be real, Marina is the Grand High Witch. Guess who was hosting this incredible coversation? The ever inquisitive and in this case nearly sprightly Maria Popova. Watching Popova navigate Abramovic, along with the absolutely bonkers questions we fiends in the audience lobbed during the show and maniacally in the lobby after, gave me an appreciation for Popova that I hadn't fully realized just from what was at the time still Brain Pickings. Yes, I thought she was smart. I hadn't yet really realized the level on which she operates.
This book is an excellent reminder that Popova is operating in a lush, creative, parallel space where synthesis and meaning and emotional depth - along with a great appreciation for rationality - collide. The final effort is not a small investment for anyone. Popova mentions this book took seven years to complete. It's delivered to readers in 600 pages or 22 hours of fantastic audio (if we're getting a 22-hour audiobook, I'd like to acknowledge the gift of making the narrator Natasha McElhone, whose choices made me feel like I was immersed in a spirited conversation over tea. The time flew).
The content is exceptional and riveting for a very specific audience, and I very much enjoyed the experience of being fully engaged with these individuals, times and places, and impactful motifs. Most of all, I loved getting back in Popova's scope. It's a truly magical place. This book is special and memorable. I can't wait to see what Popova comes up with next, and I'll patiently wait another seven years or however long it takes.
*Special thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for this alc and arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I just really appreciate that Maria Popova exists. Her work always feels thoughtful, comprehensive, and novel, and this most recent mega effort is one of the best examples of what she can REALLY do.
About a decade ago, I had one of the most incredible experiences of my life so far: seeing Marina Abramovic speak at City Arts & Lectures in San Francisco. My small group of fellow travelers - a sibling included - and I treated this like we were coming home to the coven because, let's be real, Marina is the Grand High Witch. Guess who was hosting this incredible coversation? The ever inquisitive and in this case nearly sprightly Maria Popova. Watching Popova navigate Abramovic, along with the absolutely bonkers questions we fiends in the audience lobbed during the show and maniacally in the lobby after, gave me an appreciation for Popova that I hadn't fully realized just from what was at the time still Brain Pickings. Yes, I thought she was smart. I hadn't yet really realized the level on which she operates.
This book is an excellent reminder that Popova is operating in a lush, creative, parallel space where synthesis and meaning and emotional depth - along with a great appreciation for rationality - collide. The final effort is not a small investment for anyone. Popova mentions this book took seven years to complete. It's delivered to readers in 600 pages or 22 hours of fantastic audio (if we're getting a 22-hour audiobook, I'd like to acknowledge the gift of making the narrator Natasha McElhone, whose choices made me feel like I was immersed in a spirited conversation over tea. The time flew).
The content is exceptional and riveting for a very specific audience, and I very much enjoyed the experience of being fully engaged with these individuals, times and places, and impactful motifs. Most of all, I loved getting back in Popova's scope. It's a truly magical place. This book is special and memorable. I can't wait to see what Popova comes up with next, and I'll patiently wait another seven years or however long it takes.
*Special thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for this alc and arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
March 22, 2026
I didn't realize a book could hold me in my grief. I have laid in the ocean of the grief, and let the tides pass over me as I held Traversal close. Salty water washing me anew each morning. Luck has it, I bought this book before the news came, not even an hour. As I stood over the piano, the reality has yet to sunk in, as it would take weeks. Not even now, I believe the finality. I imagine her waiting for me, sitting in the balcony, her blanket over her achy knees, and watching the cars and the people pass by. That is my last memory of her, she welcomed us the way she said farewell. The years of her life spent that way, looking from the window, waiting. Watching people with rapt attention, I could never tell what she was thinking, I never asked. I wish I did. That was almost a year and half ago, a lifetime ago for my being. Anything I say falls flat, the enormity of her absence. As my grandfather said on the phone, we lost your grandmother, the house feels so empty.
Every morning, I read this book like a prayer. All of her sentences brimming with life. I watched with rapt attention as she conversed with all her subjects. She awakened all of these people with her pen, put them in a ship and we all traversed on the blue waters of her mind. The ship lit up with easy conversation that flowed between all of us. A place to rest, a place to be. Thank you for letting us just be.
Every morning, I read this book like a prayer. All of her sentences brimming with life. I watched with rapt attention as she conversed with all her subjects. She awakened all of these people with her pen, put them in a ship and we all traversed on the blue waters of her mind. The ship lit up with easy conversation that flowed between all of us. A place to rest, a place to be. Thank you for letting us just be.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
A huge thank you to MacMillan audio and NetGalley for my audiobook!
Publishes 2.17. 2026
This is a massive massive non-fiction book filled with vignettes of different historical characters who are all intersected by the idea of what it means to be in the world and to live. We begin with Captain Cook (yes THE) and follow him, Marie Curie, the Shelleys', Byron, Whitman, Frederick Douglas, etc. It is really good- and I suggest this as easy listening. Low low stakes- there is so much information packed into this book so do not expect to remember every little fact or detail. I really loved how each person's lived experience creates the foundation for the next and how humanity altogether is rather really a miracle and more interconnected than we suppose.
The audiobook was lovely- the narrator was really easy to listen to and I enjoyed it!
This audiobook is definitely over 20 hours as the physical book is over 600 pages- expect to take time with this.
Publishes 2.17. 2026
This is a massive massive non-fiction book filled with vignettes of different historical characters who are all intersected by the idea of what it means to be in the world and to live. We begin with Captain Cook (yes THE) and follow him, Marie Curie, the Shelleys', Byron, Whitman, Frederick Douglas, etc. It is really good- and I suggest this as easy listening. Low low stakes- there is so much information packed into this book so do not expect to remember every little fact or detail. I really loved how each person's lived experience creates the foundation for the next and how humanity altogether is rather really a miracle and more interconnected than we suppose.
The audiobook was lovely- the narrator was really easy to listen to and I enjoyed it!
This audiobook is definitely over 20 hours as the physical book is over 600 pages- expect to take time with this.
March 22, 2026
Traversing the epochs, weaving stories of humans and humanity, Maria Popova takes us on a journey not easily categorizable, but immensely beautiful, at times gut-wrenching, and so deeply human. Traversal is a connective tissue of humanity’s shared past, each chapter another thread pulled into a tapestry of life pregnant with a question- what is this life?
This is a book to savor, slowly, with a pencil in hand, tracing passages that, with surgical precision, get to the marrow of all our longings and fears.
Maria Popova is a national treasure. At 567 pages, it still felt far too brief for such an incredible, delicious experience. ❤️
This is a book to savor, slowly, with a pencil in hand, tracing passages that, with surgical precision, get to the marrow of all our longings and fears.
Maria Popova is a national treasure. At 567 pages, it still felt far too brief for such an incredible, delicious experience. ❤️
February 24, 2026
Dacă nu ar exista, Maria Popova ar trebui să fie inventată! Aș ruga-o să repovestească tot ce s-a povestit vreodată pe lumea asta. ♥️
Scriitura ei este poetică, atentă, cuprinzătoare și inovatoare, iar această ultimă impresionantă realizare este cea mai bună expresie a capacităților ei reale. „Figuring” m-a încântat și mi s-a lipit de suflet, iar „Traversal” nu s-a lăsat cu nimic mai prejos.
M I N U N A T Ă carte, minunată Maria Popova!
Scriitura ei este poetică, atentă, cuprinzătoare și inovatoare, iar această ultimă impresionantă realizare este cea mai bună expresie a capacităților ei reale. „Figuring” m-a încântat și mi s-a lipit de suflet, iar „Traversal” nu s-a lăsat cu nimic mai prejos.
M I N U N A T Ă carte, minunată Maria Popova!
March 27, 2026
This is a fascinating body of work. Truly a nonfiction masterpiece.
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