Steven Poole

The routes of competing undersea cables are convoluted and geopolitically tangled. They are also easy for would-be saboteurs to find.

Shroud-chewers, lip-smackers and suckers populate this fascinating study of ‘the unquiet dead’ across the centuries

The revelation of DNA’s chemical structure made it possible to understand how it might replicate and direct the growth of life-forms.

Operation Paperclip skilfully updates the story of post-war, Nazi-inspired research into biological and chemical warfare by the US

Plus Jon Willis’s “The Pale Blue Data Point.”

On 23 March, Donald Trump said that if things didn't go to his liking in Iran, “we just keep bombing our little hearts out”. A week later the US

A magisterial history of one of the worst ever pandemics focuses on the individuals caught up in the horror

Pinball was once considered immoral, a countercultural pursuit to be played in seedy spaces.

Most early ransomware originated in Russia, where young computer programmers lacked the opportunities of their peers in Silicon Valley.

Is Hamlet still Hamlet when every word has changed? A superbly diverting book about language and creativity