I have been very busy with two book projects, one of which appears on March 2. This is Cro-Magnon:  How the Ice Age gave birth to the First Modern Humans (Bloomsbury Press, of course--my favorite publishers). This has taken a great deal of travel and library research as well as conversations with all kinds of experts. Basically, it's a book for a general audience about the first modern humans to colonize Europe, which also explores the relationships between the Neanderthals and incoming modern people, about 45,000 years ago. The story involves not only this complex relationship, but also delving in to the ultimate origins of modern people--and the Cro-Magnons--in tropical Africa. There are all kinds of heroes and villains  here--the catastrophic Mt. Toba eruption of 75,000 years ago that almost wiped out humanity, the bitter cold of the late Ice Age, the Campanian eruption in the Naples area of Italy, which has only just been recognized, and, of course, the remarkable new radiocarbon dates that are redefining modern human settlement of Europe. I've drawn heavily on Arctic historic ethnography for the book, to make the people come alive: a bit of a gamble, but worth it, I think. After all there are only a certain number of (well-documented) ways in which you can kill a reindeer or trap an arctic ptarmigan.  So, it's a book for the general audience which tries to be evocative and navigate through a very complex and sometimes contentious literature. I enjoyed writing it, and Bloomsbury have done a wonderful job of production, complete with a color insert (which cost an arm and a leg to include in terms of permissions, but it's worth it.)