STANFORD magazine Home
NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2003

‘I’m not very sympathetic to the idea that telling the life of somebody is intruding on lives of other people . . . I feel that way because I am a biographer.’

Diane Middlebrook, on her post-Stanford career

READ MORE

GO MOBILE—it's free!
iPad/iPhone app
Digital edition

 
The Gamers

COVER STORY
Clued In
Call it geek heaven. Or is it hell? The Game, a semiannual 24-plus-hour quest to unlock a seemingly impenetrable network of clues, has become a Stanford tradition for students and alumni alike. Winning requires gadgets, tactics and a ridiculous amount of cryptography. And the winners get—nothing? BY marisa milanese
 

Telling Tales Out of School
Retired from teaching but vibrant as ever, Diane Middlebrook is working on the next chapter of her life, as full-time biographer. Her latest project is characteristically adventurous: chronicling the troubled marriage of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. It’s a subject as interesting as Middlebrook herself. BY cynthia haven

The Search for Peter Starr
Pete Starr lived up to his name. A prominent San Francisco lawyer, he was one of the nation’s foremost mountaineers and conservationists in the early 1930s. Then he disappeared on a solo climbing trip to the Sierra. By the time searchers found him, all of California knew his story. BY william Alsup

Masters of Deception?
The works of Early Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck have enthralled viewers for centuries with their uncanny realism and exquisite detail. Was it sheer talent, or did they secretly rely on projection devices? A Stanford physicist takes a stand. BY marguerite Rigoglioso

 
   Privacy Policy ©2011 Stanford Alumni Association