The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley (Thorndike Press Large Print Popular and Narrative Nonfiction Identifiers) - Softcover

Weiner, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1432837427 ISBN 13: 9781432837426

Publisher: Large Print Press, 2016

Synopsis

An acclaimed travel writer examines the connection between surroundings and innovative ideas, profiling examples in such regions as early-twentieth-century Vienna, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, and Silicon Valley.

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of January 2016: Eric Weiner’s first book, The Geography of Bliss, found him in search of the happiest places on Earth. Now, in The Geography of Genius, he looks for creative hotbeds where geniuses from Socrates to Steve Jobs thrived, and asks why. Moreover, why do these hotbeds eventually fizzle? The book—an irreverent and surprisingly entertaining blend of historical biography, travel essay, and sociological study—centers around this quote by Plato: “What is honored in a country will be cultivated there,” be it intellectual discourse, art, music, literature, or life-altering gadgets like the iPhone. In the process of determining the conditions by which golden ages of genius happened when and where they did, Weiner also uncovers intriguing anecdotes that serve to illuminate and humanize god-like “characters” like Michelangelo, Beethoven, and Freud. He likewise stumbles upon answers to compelling questions like, why does genius seem like such a boy’s club? I am one of those people who dog-ear pages that contain things I find particularly interesting, and few pages of this book remained intact. There are enough fascinating and fun factoids in The Geography of Genius to keep you supplied at cocktail parties and around water coolers for years. But aside from that, it documents a moving quest that wasn’t undertaken just to satisfy a journalist’s curiosity. Weiner is a father and while it’s supposedly “too late for him,” his young daughter can still reap the lessons he learned from his travels, from defining genius, and apply them to her life. I would argue it isn’t too late for any of us. –Erin Kodicek

About the Author

Eric Weiner is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Geography of Genius and The Geography of Bliss, which has been translated into twenty languages, as well as the critically acclaimed Man Seeks God. A former correspondent for NPR and The New York Times, Weiner’s work has appeared in the New Republic, Slate, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The New York Times Magazine, and the anthology Best American Travel Writing. Visit EricWeinerBooks.com

Edition details

• Publisher: Large Print Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1432837427
• ISBN 13: 9781432837426
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 615