Discover Your Genius: How to Think Like History's Ten Most Revolutionary Minds (Paperback)

~ Michael J. Gelb (Author) "You were born with the potential for genius..." (more)
Key Phrases: discover your genius, going perpendicular, combinatory play, Thomas Jefferson, Leonardo da Vinci, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Strategies for thinking smart drawn from Plato, Queen Elizabeth I, and more.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (January 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060937904
• ISBN-13: 978-0060937904
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #125,491 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging biographies and life-improving advice, March 17, 2002

By	Tom Means (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Discover Your Genius: How to Think Like History's Ten Most Revolutionary Minds (Hardcover)

Much like Michael Gelb's brilliant "How to Think Like Leonardo DaVinci" this book succeeds in giving the reader engaging and informative biographies, while at the same time encouraging you to live and think like them.

The book is written in an easy, conversational style that gives the reader the feeling that he/she is having a delightful talk with the writer about the world's greatest thinkers.

Many times I have attempted to read up on geniuses like Plato, Darwin, and Ghandi with the intent of modeling my life after their examples, but I couldn't find the time to finish the marathon-length biographies I came across; "Discover Your Genius" is exactly what I was looking for--it gave me vast amounts of interesting information on each of the 10 geniuses and immediately showed me what I can do to improve myself with their examples.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever wondered what a genius is like and how you can enrich your life everyday by emulating them.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful book that helps you unleash your creativity, March 6, 2002

By	Blaine Greenfield "eclectic reader" (Belle Meade, NJ) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Discover Your Genius: How to Think Like History's Ten Most Revolutionary Minds (Hardcover)

I must admit to being a big Michael Gelb fan . . . I've heard him
speak (he is great!), and I loved his previous book: HOW TO
THINK LIKE LEONARDO DA VINCI . . . so naturally, when
his latest effort (DISCOVER YOUR GENIUS: HOW TO THINK
LIKE HISTORY'S TEN MOST REVOLUTIONARY MINDS) became
available, I tore into it--and was not disappointed . . . it is equally great!

Imagine being able to draw upon the collected wisdom of Plato,
Brunelleschi, Columbus, Copernicus, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare,
Jefferson, Darwin, Gandhi, and Einstein . . . Gelb
looks at these great thinkers to help you unleash your own
creavity . . . each of the invididuals profiled embodies a
special "genius" charactersitic, ranging from
optimism to courage . . . you then get to integrate these principles
into your daily life through a series of self-assessment questionnaires
and a complete program of practical exercises.

There were many memorable passages; among them:
[on how to read a Shakespeare play]
Each Shakespeare play offers a master class in emotional
intelligence and the lack thereof. As you read each play
approach it with the following questions in mind:
What can I learn from this play that will help me know myself better?
What can I learn from this play that will help me understand others better?
(It's useful to think of specific people you might wish to
understand better.)

[Thomas Jefferson's ten-point plan for personal improvement]
1. Never put off til tomorrow what you can do today. (Jefferson rose
before sunrise each day to get a head start on his massive to-do lists.)

2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself. (Jefferson
believed in the spirit of personal as well as political independence
and thought that it began with the ability to solve one's own problems.)

3. Never spend your money before you have it. (Jefferson learned
this the hard way by violating this advice repeatedly and suffering
the consequences.)

4. Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will be
dear to you. (Jefferson loved life and saw material objects as means
to experience rather than ends in themselves.)

5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold. (At the center
of power for many years, Jefferson witnessed the disastrous
effects of egotism and believing one's own publicity on many
powerful people.)

6. We never repent of having eaten too little. (Jefferson's
extraordinary vitality was in part a function of his healthy diet and
his practice of leaving the table before he was full.)

7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. (As a natural
optimist, Jefferson was able to choose to see the best in all life's
circumstances. This was his way of saying, "To get what you
choose, choose what you've got.")

8. How much pain has cost us the evils which have never
happened. (Jefferson reminds us that worry is pointless. His
optimism helped protect him from anxiety about the future.)

9. Take things away by their smooth handle. (Jefferson was an
elegant mind with a talent for finding the path of least resistance.)

10. When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a
hundred. (As a man of the Enlightenment, Jefferson championed
the voice of reason and understood the great power of words to
cause harm as well as good.)

[an exercise to help you think like Einstein]
In your notebook or on a piece of scrap paper, take two minutes
and write down as many uses as you possibly can for a paper clip.

How many uses did you write down? Take the total number of
answers and divide by two to calculate your score in terms
of uses-per-minute.

The international average score is four uses per minute. A score of
eight is excellent and a score of twelve or more correlates
significantly with other genius-level measures of idea generation
ability.

Does the alternate use test creativity? Not really. It tests one's
comfort with free association, and free association is an important
aspect of the creative process.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars These 10 are good. But, not as good as Leonardo, May 28, 2003

By	Gaetan Lion - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This book seems like a sequel of How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. And, this other book is superior to this one. Michael Gelb did a more cohesive and detailed job of fleshing out the cognitive faculties of the mind by studying Leonardo, than he did by studying this Dream Team. Occasionally, the exercises appear a bit repetitive, boring, and uninspiring.

If I had not read this other book, I would have said that this book is great. Instead, it is very good.

Michael Gelb touches on the same subjects, concepts, and exercises as in 'Leonardo.'