Genius Came Early: Creativity in the Twentieth Century - Hardcover

Cullum, Lee

9781881636908: Genius Came Early: Creativity in the Twentieth Century

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1881636909 ISBN 13: 9781881636908

Publisher: Windsor House Pub Group, 1999

This book by one of America's most thoughtful journalists explores the great voices of the twentieth century. From Sigmund Freud to Carl Jung, Albert Einstein to James Watson, Pablo Picasso to Mark Rothko, Virginia Woolf to Toni Morrison, George Gershwin to Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charlie Chaplin to Woody Allen, Cullum analyzes their gifts and their contribution to their own age. She also looks at giants of statecraft, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Nelson Mandela, who literally created new worlds.

Cullum delves into the importance of religion and spirituality in seminal lives. She discovers that a surprising number of painters and sculptors in the twentieth century have been obsessed with expressing universal truth in their work. And the spirit life, of course, was the essential force that fueled Gandhi and created his power to liberate India. It was that same spirit that reached across the years to inspire another liberator, Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States.

Moral significance is what Lee Cullum finds in the turning of the century and the birth of the new millennium which is "a time of happiness and prosperity, an imagined golden age." Lee Cullum believes that a whole new golden age does indeed await us, if we can only imagine it. There is every reason for optimism.

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About the Author:

Lee Cullum, a columnist based at the Dallas Morning News, is a regular commentator on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. She also has done commentaries for All Things Considered on National Public Radio. This is her first book.

Review:

A true woman of letters, Lee Cullum combines a rare and valuable gift for synthesis with a wide-ranging intelligence, moral passion, and impeccable prose. Genius Came Early is a book to inspire and instruct--a primer for the new millennium. -- Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, Author of A Woman of Independent Means

Lee Cullum has captured the essence of our century, and her understanding and description of the musical theatre brought to life for me the wonderful memories of our time through the songs that have provided a constant thread. What a pleasure to have this enduring art form so beautifully articulated. -- Roger Horchow, Broadway producer, Kiss Me Kate

Lee Cullum has pulled off the impossible. She has written a book of serious scholarship about the creative geniuses of the twentieth century that sings. It swings and sways with the magic of the great ones--Einstein, Picasso, Woolf, Freud, Churchill, Gandhi, Gershwin, Chaplin and so many others. This is an accessible work of citation and interpretation that belongs on every bookshelf and under every reading light. -- Jim Lehrer, Author of Purple Dots

Lee Cullum sets the stage for the next millennium by reviewing the path of the passing one. She brings together all the elements that combined to create the progress of this century. Her conclusion--that it is the spirit of the people, drawn out by their leaders, that is the ultimate defining influence--is a profound insight into the forces that shaped our time. -- Kay Bailey Hutchison, United States Senator

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