In honor of our cover on Extremely Deep Thinkers, we would like to recommend one novel this week, a great book on how Extremely Deep Thinking can get you crosswise of nature itself. That book is Bouvard and Pecuchet, the last (and uncompleted) novel by Gustave Flaubert, the author of Madame Bovary. One of the comic masterpieces of the 19th century, this tale of two fools who try to teach themselves how to farm by reading books has a purity and simplicity of vision that belies the almost heroic labors its author went to in its service: The novel mentions over a thousand books, every one of which Flaubert himself read as research.