If you’re curating, it’s hard to pass up There Is No Theory of Everything. Simon Critchley—yes, he’s a Brit, and I was damn certain before I checked—has written a marvelous column about … well, I’m not sure about exactly what, but I’ll be thinking about it for a long time. Best quote? Sidney Morgenbesser, Columbia University philosophy professor, on his deathbed: “Why is God making me suffer so much? Just because I don’t believe in him?” Read this piece, please!

The Atlantic offers up a matched set, with Meet the New Hillary by Molly Ball and Donald Trump is Reagan’s Heir by Matthew Pressman. I fear for all of us, greatly! Really!!!

Confession: I haven’t read The Elmore Leonard Story by Joan Acocella for the New York Review of Books’ September 24 issue. But if I don’t show up for work this afternoon, y’all can make an educated guess about what I will be doing. One great writer!

The Curator noted the passing of Mike Nichols last November in its November 26 issue. Sam Kashner and Charles Maslow-Freen have written Mike Nichols’s Life and Career: The Definitive Oral History for the October 2015 issue of Vanity Fair.

A Farewell is Mark Bittman’s last column for the New York Times. Posted this past Saturday, it recounts the themes he has focused on during his five years as an op-ed food writer for the Times. His pieces don’t set mouths a-watering, but he knows an awful lot about food as an issue. He’ll be missed, but I await his disclosures about the start-up with which he will be involved.

“One in, one out.” Kim Severson chronicles Ruth Reichl après Gourmet magazine in Ruth Reichl Recharges in the Kitchen, in the September 15 New York Times. New cookbook coming soon!

Finally, I’ve been craving fish sandwiches in a serious way. In Tucson that means regular stops at Kingfisher, but I’m ready to leave for Long Beach now, after seeing this sandwich from Bear Flag Fish.