Years ago I read an obituary of the last human on Earth who could navigate the open ocean entirely by reading the natural landscape. Pius “Mau” Piailug could wayfind entirely by studying birds and fishes and stars, winds and smells, the rhythm of the swells of the waves. This particular death haunted me beyond measure. I felt a mix of wonder and nausea thinking that an entire way of knowing the world could be contained inside one single person and then be gone in one instant. The rest of us are left here looking at the same drifting clouds, the same stars, the same birds, in various states of partial but mostly inept comprehension. The miracle of holding a galaxy of details in one single brain, to see meaning, entanglement, and instruction knitted across that vastness—it’s one way to explain the singularity of Michael Silverblatt, who hosted Bookworm , on KCRW, from 1989 until 2022. Silverblatt died last week at age 73, and we have in that one instant lost our greatest reader.…