What do you give a self-described "geek" for a birthday?

Writers' Almanac:

It's the birthday of Rachel Maddow, who began hosting her own political television show on a Monday night in September 2008 and a week later had the most-watched MSNBC show of the night, with more than 1.8 million viewers. She doubled the audience for the station's 9 p.m. hour, and a large chunk of her viewers fall in the much-sought-after demographic of 25- to 54-year-olds.

She writes up essays of commentary for her nightly show, talks about news events that she feels haven't been covered enough (which she calls "Holy Mackerel" stories), announces a "cocktail moment" — a bit of trivia or witticism that can be used to impress friends — and does extensive reporting on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

She went to Stanford, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (the first openly gay Rhodes Scholar ever chosen), and while writing her graduate dissertation, entitled HIV/AIDS and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons, she moved out to rural Massachusetts in the hopes of depriving herself of distractions and thereby forcing herself to sit down and write. She worked a number of odd jobs to survive, including, she lists, "waitress, bike messenger, bucket washer at a coffee-bean factory, yard help, landscaping laborer, and handyman." Before she appeared on MSNBC, she had her own very popular radio program, also called The Rachel Maddow Show. She still doesn't own a television.

She's at work on a book about the military and politics, and it's being edited by Rachel Klayman, who helped edit then-Senator Barack Obama's 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope.