A Smart, Fascinating Glimpse of the Life of a Child Prodigy
588352
The Fiery Alphabet is manages that rare feat of entertaining you while simultaneously leaving you feeling smarter when you finish. It follows the life of child prodigy Daniela Messo as she bumps into and subsequently smashes the various ceilings imposed on her by society. The world author Diane Lefer creates is immersive and fully realized -- it will have you thinking about it long after you've turned the last page.
1180529
A collection of the poems of this great poet is preceded by a 143 page biography, an easy read, thorough and well documented; a fascinating story of a genius whose life and volume of work were cut short by terminal illness and suicide. His life and circumstances seemed, to some, an ironic paradox to his exquisite poetry so perfectly crafted. However, the author shows us the truth - the honesty, sincerity and authenticity of Reece and of his literary work.
319217
A sterling example of the contemporary kind of memoir that would be compelling with or without a link to the famous.  In brisk, attention-holding style that I couldn't put down, Julia Baird brings to life her lovable semi-outcast parents and their often dysfunctional extended family, crafting a priceless portrait of postwar British life--that also just happened to be incubating a genius.  While the elder Julia, life-loving, artistic, and nurturing mother of John, Julia (the author), and Jackie, is alive, her sisters patronize and shame her out of custody of two of her children. When she dies, they take charge of the little girls while excluding them from real family membership.  The traumatic pattern of John's childhood was thus repeated in Julia Baird's adolescence.  However, she is able to find compassion for her cold and uncommunicative guardians, understand John's own excesses, and create a warm and healthy family of her own.  Without sensationalizing it, she gives a convincing counternarrative to the standard summary about Julia Lennon/Dykins's children, showing that that crushing line "mother...I wanted you/you didn't want me" was emotionally but not factually accurate.  There are plenty of documents struggling to show 'the private John Lennon'--worthwhile ones include Larry Kane's&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Lennon-Revealed-Exclusive-new-interviews-with-Yoko-Ono-and-more-than-100-friend/dp/B001KJ76NO/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Lennon Revealed: Exclusive new interviews with Yoko Ono and more than 100 friend</a>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Imagine-Deluxe-Edition/dp/B000AYELY2/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Imagine (Deluxe Edition)</a>&nbsp;documentary.  I'm glad that this book simply tells Julia Baird's own powerful story and the story of her whole family, with her brother a major part--as one's siblings should be--but not the sole focus.
1118181
A wonderful book, filled with insights into one of baseball's lesser known Hall of Famers, unless you're a longtime Yankees fan. I think his daughter and her collaborator did some fairly extensive research too back up their stories. And it really captured a side of a sports figure that we haven't seen before. She included his flaws and his drive to be a success. And it told some of his wife's story as well, which made the book more well rounded. She had a very interesting life as well and was a perfect match for her husband in many important ways..  Lefty was a unique individual and talented in ways beyond baseball. It's fascinating to see how he and his wife, June, interacted with so many people in the entertainment world. This is an American success story that children can emulate. I'm going to have my 15 year old son read it.
2947705
I'm a performing songwriter and a fan of Santana from the very beginning. I bought the book after hearing Carlos being interviewed on NPR, and was not disappointed. If you are interested in the genetic and circumstantial development of a groundbreaking musician, written in a personal and intimate voice, then you will enjoy this memoir. From his roots in Autlan Mexico through Tijuana and California, making serendipitous connections with pioneers like Bill Graham,and roots influences like Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker it is an entrancing ride. Santana spends quite a bit of the book describing his spiritual development, but it is inseparable from his musical development and not at all preachy. Carlos is a man of vast experience, wide boundaries, and extraordinary wisdom. The writing style is intimate and often colloquial -- I could hear the words in his voice and accent. It is a work that I will reference again and again. Take the chance.
4104774
This is an intriguing story of a young diplomat caught up as the Chinese Cultural Revolution assaults Hong Kong.  In this historical memoir the author shares intimate personal life experiences, from his first love to the birth of his first child, to his passionate love of music.  It's a portrait of an enthusiastic young man thrown into a life of extraordinary adventures.  I savored each page transported into a foreign world, not wanting the story to end.
83101
If a picture is truly worth a thousand words, then the savant gifts of Daniel Tammet are all the more startling because he has an ability to meld his senses together seamlessly to see things nobody else can. It's an impressive, even daunting prowess that comes at a high price since he has Asperger's syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes him to be limited in his ability to fit in with the larger culture, as well as synaesthesia, a condition where sounds, words or numbers can translate into colors, shapes or textures. In fact, the latter condition is reflected in the book's title as he associates the color blue with Wednesdays. What makes this book so thoroughly unique is that the book is not a treatise of a subject by a medical professional but a memoir by the subject himself.

As such, there are no grand conclusions drawn about either medical condition, or scientific assumptions of how Tammet came to his gifts. What the author does quite plainly is share how he approaches such astonishing feats as reciting pi to over 22,000 decimal points over the course of five hours. We get a palpable sense of how he perceives theorems and automatically develops strategies based on his innate sense with numbers and images. But before you can say Rain Man, you also see a young man who is actually functioning in the world on his own, which illustrates perfectly the spectrum of severity with autism. Tammet's affliction has mild enough for him to be relatively self-sufficient, even though his struggles to gain societal acceptance have been a traumatizing road.

Raised by loving parents, he spent most of his childhood alone and could only relate to fellow outsiders like immigrants and exchange students, people who heightened his facility for foreign languages. There were signs - a hyper-sensitivity to noise; almost complete literal-mindedness; a narrow but intense interests in a few, eccentric subjects at the exclusion of others; displays of socially inappropriate behavior (which he has since been able to manage); and peculiarities in speech and thought patterns. It all comes together as a fascinating portrait with no pretense toward a false sense of triumph over extreme adversity. Such clichs are better left to Lifetime TV-movies since Tammet lives a good, simple life in London with his life partner Neil Mitchell and is busy creating a new language and conquering other mathematical frontiers. One cannot help but root for him thanks to his wonderfully personal, unaffected memoir.
1608429
This book is not a quick read nor is it an easy read, which makes complete sense since Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was and is a genius to reckon with. But it is a fascinating and well-presented account by the author whose approach is to write about persons who are so creative we wonder what makes them that way.

The creativity of Einstein, the author suggests, has to do both with his personal characteristics and the time and place in which he lived. Certainly genius prompts one to look at the world in a way others have not yet noticed. Certainly, surroundings that stimulate the musings of the mind can and will produce unconventional results. The young Einstein portrayed here sounds like a person who was impelled toward groundbreaking ideas, both by his fascination with physical reality and by his unconventional route toward explaining it.

Here is hope for those whose bright minds rebel at the tedium of most educational approaches, and those who, having been spurned or overlooked by the so-called experts, produce something better than they could have envisioned--whether in reaction to, or in spite of the odds--remains an open question.

Isaaacson suggests that Einstein very much inhabited his own world, with all of the ordinary stresses and strains of family relationships, need for meaningful work, joys and frustrations both about personal issues and events on the world scene that we all face. It is helpful to see how the man who opened the way to an entire discipline ordered his daily life and interacted with his family and colleagues.

There is underlying the genius a real sense of playfulness--not in a frivolous sense but the more important meaning of play in which one engages one's whole being intent upon an activity that demands concentration and energies. Einstein thrived in the playground of physics in the same way that Mozart thrived in the playground of music.

Isaacson reminds us that an element of this approach to life can lead, as it did for Einstein, to a sincere belief in a "God who reveals Himself in the harmony of all that exists."

Drawing upon letters and papers from Einstein's career and personal life not heretofore available, the author has written a work that makes Einstein's thought accessible to the layperson. The book flows well and maintains the reader's interest throughout.

A native of New Orleans, Walter Isaacson has been the chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the acclaimed author of biographies of other creative thinkers: Franklin Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and Henry Kissinger Kissinger: A Biography and is co-author of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. A graduate of Harvard and Oxford (where he was a Rhodes Scholar), he is the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute.
234029
This glimpse into the mind of a young DFW reveals how brilliant he was at such a young age.  A must read for devout fans.
2755576
Shakti Gawain was one of the first personal growth authors I ever got into and remains to this day one of my favorites. Metaphysically, she was a pioneer and a revolutionary, introducing many of the concepts that are common knolwedge to people on a mataphysical path today: we create our own reality, the art of visualization and the mirror principle in relationships just to name a few. At the time I read all her books and listened to all of her tapes. I learned so much from this woman and learned to really cherish her as a teacher and person. In this light, you can imagine how pleased I was when this book came out: her autobiography. What a priviledge to take a peak into the life of such an influential teacher.

Her bio is very candid: she reveals the good and the ugly of her own personal journey. But it is also inspiring as well as fascinating as we get to take a look at the human potential movement through the sixties and seventies, with all the experimenting that was going on at the time.

Overall this book is a great read, especially for people that are into Shakti's other work, but I think possibly even for people that have never encountered her material before. The woman has had quite a fascinating and eventful life, making this book very interesting indeed.
169188
This memoir about a talented and intelligent young lady's transition from late teen age years to young adulthood opens another world beyond the direct experience of most, including this reader.  We are taken to and from Europe where we meet individuals who place high value on ideas and philosophy, where the author describes art, architecture and ambiance, and introduces the reader to individuals of another almost (as I see it) bygone high culture.  Among others, I was intrigued by the author's great uncle, Msgr. William A. Hemmick, the only American Canon of St. Peter's Basilica.  I'll say no more, but suggest one read the book.  The author uses contemporaneous diary entries coupled with the perspective of the well-educated and successful mature woman.  In this, the author succeeds.  The memoir is not in strict chronological order but arranged as one might remember long ago, which I found helpful.  The book held my attention due to the flow of the writing and my interest due to the subject matter.  The book is easily a one evening read and well worth the effort.
1291700
A wonderful glimpse into the life of a very self destructive genius. I have just recently started to listen to his music and I find myself stunned by how good he is, but he must have been a hard man to love. I'm not sure that every man can be defined and explained by a book, but the author certainly tries very hard to give you the real person and not some mythical character. It is well worth reading.
373009
This is a really interesting autobiographical account of Lang Lang, his passion for classical piano, the difficulties that he encountered on the way to becoming a famous concert pianist, and the various cultures that he encountered growing up in China, studying music in Philadelphia, and then performing around the world. The writing is clear and vivid, with many interesting anecdotes. Lovers of classical music will be interested in how he crossed paths with other famous classical musicians. Lang Lang gives a very interesting picture of how he grew up to be a professional pianist, and also what goes through his mind during practice and performance.
4149295
This is a fast moving memoir of a very pretty British born woman reared in a  climate of wealth and aristocratic privilege.  She is not particularly well-known, but has led a fascinating life, which has brought her into contact with royalty, Hollywood celebrities, academic stars, and even Sigmund Freud's grandson.

In her early life, the author was subjected to emotional, sexual and physical traumas.  Alcohol was always a problem. As an adult, she suddenly learns that her father may not be whom she thought he was,  Thus the book includes a detective story--replete with DNA matches to resolve the mystery.

Although the narrative here is somewhat reminiscent of the "Mommy Dearest" or even the "Grandmommy Dearest" genres, it involves much more than that--including many humerous interludes and covering a wider range of interfamily dynamics.  It is further enhanced by many intimate photos.
9020
Far From the Tree, by Andrew Solomon. I am not sure why I ordered this book, because it's not in my usual field of interest, but I'm very glad I did. The large book contains a wealth of case histories that are fascinating and well described in matter of fact terms. There is no great emphasis on the technical details of diagnosis or treatment but many sound statements based on experience that make sense and give insight to a non-technical reader. Examples are too numerous to mention, covering conditions like autism, transgender, which can start when the child is very young, unlike schizophrenia, which usually strikes in early adulthood, and there is a section on prodigies that shows the advantages and difficulties of having an exceptionally gifted child. But what stands out for me is the amazing devotion of many parents of a seriously disabled child, one who is born essentially vegetative but human and destined to change in no way as life continues except to get physically larger. The lifelong devotion of a large percentage of these parents, who worry about what will happen to the child when they are too old to look after it, is a striking characteristic in our  modern world. Solomon shows the same down to earth and candid analysis in describing his own case history. An unusual book to start leafing through, and then reading one section after another.
2296181
Ricky has written a very interesting book about his experiences as a performer and his journey to discover himself.  As a fan for many years, I always wanted to have a long conversation with Ricky and he has given us that opportunity with this very personal book.  From his unusual childhood to his recent revelations, the book is full of insight into a world that few have experienced. He is modest about his incredible professional accomplishments and sincere in his desire to reach out to others through his charitable work. He has a sense of humor about himself and a true appreciation for his many blessings. Some of the book is heart wrenching as he is frank in his description of his fears and self doubts, especially when discussing the discovery of his sexual identity and what he feared that might do to his future. I wish that he had not doubted that those of us who admire him would continue to do so, perhaps even more, because of his willingness to discuss those things that were most private to him. The discovery of his own personal joy and his love of parenthood is a pleasure to share with this very private and rather shy man.  This was an enjoyable book.
4594021
Mark Haddon's curious book describes in the simplest prose what life is like when seen through the eyes of a 15 year-old autistic boy. The book's protagonist, Christopher, navigates daily life with charts, graphs, logic and truth.  Not so strange; until you realize as you read how little "normal" people notice the details in the world around them, and how much "normal" people lie during the course of a day, week, month, or year.

If this book paints an accurate description of life with autism (and there seems to be ample evidence that it does), then I am astounded at the bravery that these individuals exhibit, as square pegs, trying to live their lives in a round-hole world.

Christopher employs true creativity and imagination (although as an autistic person he argues that he has neither) to invent ways of coping with a confusing and often terrifying world.

Exceptionally well done.

C.A.Wulff -