this is a great english novel written by george eliot was the pen name of mary ann evans, one of the great english writers of the 19th century. middlemarch is the best novel but i haven't read them all so i shouldn't say that, published in 71 and set in the 1870s and the english midlands and really it is a kind of epic novel with some hugely important issues of family and community and how social change happens and it's such a gripping story. i was introduced to it in a gradual defeat coke graduate school laid out by the students as a way of thinking about the human condition and i think it is a wonderful book. >> host: currently you are reading robertt putnam's the upswing and adam jacobs the year of the lord 1843. >> guest: at the upswing is the next book and put him is known for a book you wrote in 2,000 the script breakdown. he is one of the great social observers and it was supposed to be out this summer but i guess it's been delayed a little bit and at the end of the journalism of the course of the last century describing the path he says showed that coming together and pulling