Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Joan of Arc. What sets them apart from their peers in the Middle Ages?
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and William Shakespeare? What do these Renaissance men have in common?
These talented individuals were geniuses, according to Craig Wright, the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor Emeritus of Music at Yale University, where he teaches the popular undergraduate course Exploring the Nature of Genius.
Wright is convinced that we can learn from the 14 habits and nurtured habits and character traits such as resilience, childlike imagination, insatiable curiosity, passion, rebelliousness, relaxation, and concentration.'
We won't list the seven other qualities because we think that you will have a jolly good time reading Wright's entertaining anecdotal materials and historical tidbits about the personal qualities of these men and women.
In the spritely chapter on "Time to Concentrate" (see the excerpt), we get a glimpse of Thomas Wolfe, at six feet, six inches tall, writing late at night on the top of his kitchen refrigerator, and even more bizarre, Nabokov, while writing Lolita, spending all night in the back seat of his parked car.
The chapter titles — Find Your Missing Piece, Be the Fox, Move Fast and Break Things, Now Relax — should further convince you that this is both a fun and an informative book.
