Prodigy

by Amy Wallace

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525244042
• ISBN13: 9780525244042
• Release Date: June 1986
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 297 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating and Heartbreaking

I'm doing research on child prodigies for my newest book. The whole area of intellegence has always intrigued me, so this is painless research. More than that, this book, and the man it's about, William Sidis, is fascinating. And heartbreaking. According to this book, William Sidis' IQ was estimated at 300. He was simply brilliant, going through gradeschool in three months and high school in 6 weeks. He took the entrance exam to Harvard at age nine and passed, but wasn't allowed entrance until age 11. And because of his gift he was hounded & ridiculed by the media from a young age until he basically went underground as an adult, hiding his genuis. It's very sad and will make you ashamed of what we sometimes do to one another. In this case, a great intellect and all his possible achievements were lost. A fascinating, fascinating book.

Gigantic Genius Gone Goofy

You will become ga ga admiring the staggeringly stupendous intellect of super-precocious child prodigy William James Sidis in this excellent biography. He was an academic mega-genius whose social ineptitude in society is profoundly disturbing. Sidis was named in honor of the famous Harvard University philosopher/psychologist William James. The last name of William James Sidis was a palindrome: it could be spelled the same forward as well as backwards. Similarly and ironically his mind was palindromic: in the realm of cerebralization and intellectual thought there may have been no greater a prodigious potential in the history of the world ( rivaling Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, Plato, Socrates, etc. ). Tragically, the mind-boggling potential of Sidis was predominantly unfulfilled. Palindromic Sidis was a radical of socially aberrant behavior. He was a prodigy in reverse who revolted from the extravagant expectations thrust upon him. Consequently Sidis went from "great expectations" to "great expectorations". He was socially spit upon, chastised and shunned as an adult for his eccentrically bizarre behabior. He was the Ultima Thule of lost talent performing such menial jobs as being a janitor. He was a contradiction of intellectual and behavioral dyslexia. He was analogous to computer overload: akin to HAL in the classic sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey": super spaced out and gone awry. When one is an extreme case of extreme cases they may very well beome a social basket case. I can deeply empathize with William James Sidis because I have resided in the socially isolated stratosphere of extreme intellectual genius my entire life. I have been descibed as being "too brilliant for my own good". Intense social introversion and extreme hypersensitivity do not mutually commingle with the ultra-psychological stress imposed upon a genius when other individuals are too demanding, too scornful, too mocking and too unsympathetically impersonal.

The only perfect life is one lived in seclusion.

This is the second time that I've been drawn to this unique book. Having just enough in common with Billy Sidis (membership in two high IQ societies and extreme introversion) I can recognise the "ring of truth" to this account. I know from first hand experience how this society, especially the public schools, go out of their way to haze and torture the gifted and the "different"- no matter how hard one tries to keep a low profile. Indeed, Sidis's motto, "The only perfect life is one lived in seclusion" is also my own, learned from hard experience. As for William James Sidis himself, here was a person who lectured on 4th dimensional mathematics at Harvard at the age of 11. It was said that he probably spoke every language of mankind- and actually invented entirely new languages of his own. He wrote the first book on cosmology that ever theorised the existence of black holes. He was the first to see the correlation of the 11 year sunspot cycle on both climate and human behavior. He wrote some of the first "alternative histories" of the United States (rejecting official proganda.) He had absolute contempt for capitalism and corporations (he seems to have been incapable of telling lies or exploiting other people.) He recognised the fundamental contribution of Native Americans to mainstream American culture long before anyone else. He was absolutely convinced not only that extraterestrial intelligence existed, but that it had to exist. He wrote seriously of Atlantis while "serious" scholars scoffed at the idea. He totally rejected formal theology and religion- while having no doubt that a higher power existed... One of the chapters of this book is entitled "Sidis an Avatar?" While William Sidis himself would have automatically and violently rejected such a claim, I personally wonder if it might have not been close to the truth....

A man with an IQ of over 300

You will not regret reading the biography of the most intellectual man ever to live.

The Prodigy is a fascinating book and well written.

I loved this book. William James Sidis led an extraordinary life. The book also shows how the media has always wreaked havoc with innocent people's lives for profit only. They have no real desire for educating and informing the public. Their sole goal is sensationalization to sell papers et cetera. William James Sidis was indeed the world's greatest brain and I wish I had known him. Also some great Boston and other history.