**Longlisted for the 2025 Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award** *A
Guardian Financial Times New Statesman and GQ Book for 2025 * *From the Sunday Times
bestselling author of Difficult Women * 'Brilliant timely and compulsively readable. Helen
Lewis shows how the idea of genius has warped our understanding of human creativity - and why
people of vast accomplishment in one domain can prove so destructively clueless in others.'
OLIVER BURKEMAN The tortured poet. The rebellious scientist. The monstrous artist. The tech
disruptor. You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. You can also tell
who it excludes who it enables and what it is prepared to tolerate . Taking us from the
Renaissance Florence of Leonardo da Vinci to the Floridian rocket launches of Elon Musk's
SpaceX Helen Lewis unravels a word that we all use - without really questioning what it means.
Along the way she uncovers the secret of the Beatles' success asks how biographers should
solve the Austen Problem and reveals why Stephen Hawking thought IQ tests were for losers
(before taking one herself). And she asks if the modern idea of genius - a class of special
people - is distorting our view of the world. 'Lucid funny and fascinating' ADAM BUXTON 'An
indispensable companion to our times' CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ **A smart-thinking gift for
curious minds**
