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Geography of Genius - book review

A former NPR correspondent and now author, Eric Weiner a resident of Washington DC, has written this witty but sort of non conclusive body of work around what makes genius grow in certain parts of the world vs. another.  That is if you buy into the notion that genius indeed is geographically concentrated in certain lat long vs. another.

His travels take him from Silicon Valley, the mother-ship of all innovation these days, to former great cities that produced masters in art, philosophy, science etc.  From Athens, Greece to Calcutta, India he travels to seek out what genius really was and is.  From some experiments done by an English fella called Galton, he starts his narrative about the Galton Box.  This dude decides to measure everything that can be statistically analyzed, including figuring out which part of England had the most comely of women.

He used felt pad and pins to do this activity and came up with a map showing the Londonites were prettiest and Scottish lassies were ugly.  From this the conclusion drawn is that even the most blase concepts can be measured and if done right can shed light on complex ideas.

Genius he concludes is not a genetic phenomenon or something that happens in a lab, it is the recognition of a trait as determined by the public that benefits from said attribute.  Many times genius is recognized posthumously while the artist or scientist may be considered a nut when creating or rendering his genius when alive.  Such is the irony of genius.  From Tesla to Monet there are examples of how an amazing life was mistreated by fellow man but later discovered to be a genius.

Also there are a host of mitigating factors that ensure the creation of genius in one part of the world vs. another and not as he shows through forced manual intervention like hiring a bunch of Russian engineers and making them live in close proximity for a period of time.  Politics, culture, circumstance and even adversity at times has fueled imagination and creative thinking to lead to a breakthrough which is now recognized as genius.

Rabindranath Tagore and Amar Bose are from that part of the world where today you would be hard pressed to find room to breathe yet during a different period and circumstance something motivated these two individuals with modest backgrounds to do work recognized in art and science to this day.
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