The introduction to Discover Your Genius shows off the double meaning of the book's title in plain language: it is meant to help you find both your own potential for greatness and a meaningful role model to provide focus. In an effort to lead you to both simultaneously, Michael J. Gelb has created a combination workbook, guided journal, and historical biography of 10 outstanding humans.

Arranged chronologically, Discover Your Genius begins with Plato and ends with Einstein, meeting up with Brunelleschi, Columbus, Copernicus, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, Jefferson, Darwin, and Ghandi in between. Each chapter highlights a few specific achievements while analyzing the methods and motivations of the geniuses in question.

Accompanying exercises encourage you to talk with friends, create lists and goals, seek additional reading and musical selections, and uncover your dreams. From designing a personal coat of arms filled with meaningful symbols to developing the habit of taking regular walks, these exercises balance quickly achievable activities with ongoing life changes. Several chapters urge you to involve your friends, with evenings of special, themed dinners, like the toga party with Symposium Lamb Delight, gallons of wine, and recitations of personal "odes to love."

What you'll get out of all this is dependent on your own individual views of history and politics, but keep in mind it's hard to find a truly great figure who is not controversial. If you are able to overlook the inherent hypocrisy in, for example, Thomas Jefferson (slave owner) as bastion of personal freedom, and the great explorers' (Columbus) direct responsibility for a number of known atrocities, you'll find plenty to ponder and enjoy. --Jill Lightner

From Library Journal
Strategies for thinking smart drawn from Plato, Queen Elizabeth I, and more. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Leadership and creative thinking guru Gelb (author of How To Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci, 1998) obviously subscribes to the belief that since he was successful with his previous volume, the best thing to do is to multiply that concept by 10! Now the reader is urged to take lessons from the geniuses of Western civilization, an "intellectual dream team," if you will, that includes Plato, Brunelleschi, Columbus, Copernicus, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, Jefferson, Darwin, Gandhi, and Einstein. Gelb offers a mishmash of biography, quotations, self-assessments geared to each genius' qualities, and exercises to assist the reader to adopt those qualities (for example, for Columbus, "Cultivate optimism in the face of adversity," and for Darwin, "Find your own Beetlemania," You get the idea). Gelb has the last word in self-promotion. Turning the tables on Neil Postman, who recently wrote, "Children start school as question marks and leave as periods," Gelb instead offers, "Rediscover yourself as a question mark by contemplating these extraordinary (10) exclamation points." Allen Weakland
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

In this sage study, the author of How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci ups the ante. Instead of one brainiac, he enlists ten of history￯﾿ﾽs greatest geniuses to show readers how to enhance their own creativity. His genius dream team is prodigious: Plato, Filippo Brunelleschi, Christopher Columbus, Nicholas Copernicus, Queen Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Mahatma Gandhi, and Albert Einstein. Each member of the team embodies a special genius characteristic; for example, love of wisdom, emotional intelligence. It's Pilates for the mind.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Michael J. Gelb, bestselling author of How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, draws upon history's most revolutionary minds to help you unleash your own creativity. With fascinating biographies of all ten geniuses, personal self-assessments, and practical exercises, this book is the key to unlocking the genius inside you!

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal