Edison's ghosts : the untold weirdness of history's greatest geniuses

Edison's ghosts The untold weirdness of history's greatest geniuses

Katie Spalding

Book - 2023

"Overturn everything you knew about history's greatest minds in this raucous and hilarious book, where it turns out there's a finer line between "genius" and "idiot" than we've previously known. As Albert Einstein almost certainly never said, everyone is a genius - but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." So begins Katie Spalding's spunky takedown of the Western canon, and how genius may not be as irrefutably great as we commonly understand. While most of us may never become Einstein, it may surprise you to learn that there's probably a bunch of stuff you can do that Einstein couldn't. And, as Spalding shows, ...the famous prodigies she explores here were quite odd by any definition."--Amazon.com.

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Subjects
Eccentrics and eccentricities > Anecdotes.
Eccentrics and eccentricities > Biography.
Gifted persons > Anecdotes.
Gifted persons > Biography.
Genius > Anecdotes.
TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Inventions.
Anecdotes.
Biographies.
Humor.
Genres
Anecdotes
Biographies
Humor
Published
New York : Little, Brown and Company 2023.
Language
English
Main Author
Katie Spalding (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
342 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-332) and index.
ISBN
9780316529525
  • Introduction
  • 1. The Mathematical Cult Leader Pythagoras, and His Incredibly Stupid Death
  • 2. Confucius Was an Ugly Nerd with Low Self-Esteem
  • 3. Never, Ever Hire Leonardo da Vinci
  • 4. Galileo Utterly Fails to Read the Room
  • 5. The Entirely Unbelievable Life of Tycho Brahe
  • 6. When Rene Descartes Got Baked
  • 7. Isaac Newton and the Philosopher's Stone
  • 8. Mozart Uses His Superstar Status to Tell Us All to Kiss His Arse … Over and Over Again
  • 9. Benjamin Franklin Uses World-Changing Technology to Prank Friends, Self
  • 10.. Émilie du Châtelet Cares Not for Your Social Mores, and She Will Fight You in Her Underwear to Prove It
  • 11. Johann Christian Reil Invents Psychiatry and Things Get Really Weird Really Quickly
  • 12. Napoleon Bonaparte's Fluffiest Foe
  • 13. Lord Byron, the Patron Saint of Fuckboys
  • 14. Ada Lovelace's (Husband's) Family Jewels
  • 15. Galois Hunting
  • 16. John Couch Adams Ignores His Mail, Loses Neptune
  • 17. You Really Wouldn't Want to Hang Out with Karl Marx
  • 18. Charles Darwin: Glutton; Worm Dad; Murderer?
  • 19. James Glaisher, the Victorian Weatherman Who Nearly Became an Astronaut
  • 20. Sigmund Freud Used Cocaine So Much He Thought Numbers Wanted to Kill Him
  • 21. Arthur Conan Doyle Gets Pranked So Hard He Claims Fairies Exist
  • 22. Thomas Edison's Lesser-Known Invention: Dial-a-Ghost
  • 23. Real-Life Supervillain Nicola Tesla Takes the Term 'Pigeon Fancying' a Bit Too Literally
  • 24. Marie Curie Defies All the Odds to Accidentally Poison Both Herself and Thousands of Strangers
  • 25. Albert Einstein: Public Nuisance, Love Rat
  • 26. Kurt Gödel, the Disney Princess Who Broke Time
  • 27. Maya Angelou, in: Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot
  • 28. Ernest Hemingway May Have Been the Worst Double Agent Ever
  • 29. Yukio Mishima and the Shortest, Gayest Fascist Coup in History
  • 30. NASA Forgets about Women, Toilets and the Metric System
  • Epilogue
  • References
  • Acknowledgements
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

Spalding's first book is a foray into the humorous side of history. Running the gamut from Leonardo da Vinci to Thomas Edison, the text takes a lighter approach, portraying funny situations while also providing further context about the figures. Consider the sketches of war chariots that da Vinci sent to a duke that resembled UFO-looking tanks, not to mention all the statues and artworks he didn't finish. Although the chapter titles promise hilarity, many of the entries were bogged down with too much detail at times. Most of the figures profiled are white men, except Confucius--more diversity of figures outside of Europe would have been a welcome addition to the text. Nonetheless, readers will discover surprising details such as Freud's disastrous cocaine habit and Edison's work on a device that he hoped could communicate with the dead, sort of a "Dial-a-Ghost" as Spalding calls it. Ideal for fans of history who enjoy the lighter side, Edison's Ghosts will be an entertaining addition to public library shelves.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Mathematician Spalding takes some of history's most lauded savants down a notch in this gut-busting survey. Combining solid academic research with bawdy humor, Spalding portrays each so-called "genius" in a series of embarrassing vignettes, such as the time Napoleon Bonaparte's chief of staff released thousands of tame rabbits into a field for a celebratory hunt. Instead of fleeing from Napoleon and his generals, the rabbits "hopp merrily towards them.... Hoping for some snuggles and snacks" and eventually causing the hunters to "beat a hasty retreat." Elsewhere, Spalding ascribes Sigmund Freud's conviction that "the universe was sending him messages through the appearance of various numbers" to his prolific cocaine habit, notes that enthusiastic sailor Albert Einstein's inability to swim or sail proficiently required rescuers to continually fish him out of the water along the northeastern seaboard, recounts how Benjamin Franklin pranked his dinner guests by electrifying their wine glasses, and details Thomas Edison's plans for a "spirit phone" that could allow people to communicate with the dead. Full of jaw-dropping anecdotes and valuable history lessons, this is a delight. (May)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A cheeky tour of history's brightest and most peculiar people. From Pythagoras to Yukio Mishima, first-time author Spalding delivers consistently lively, witty excursions into the sometimes-weird lives and beliefs of the famous. The author writes that Leonardo da Vinci was a compulsive quitter, someone who would take on big commissions and money and then leave, sometimes coming back up to years later to finish or not. "Even his most famous work, the Mona Lisa, he never finished--he took it with him to France and insisted until his death that there was still more to do before it was complete," writes the author. Meanwhile, Galileo "utterly fail[ed] to read the room" when it came to inquisitions about the center of the universe. Descartes was a "weirdo celebrity heretic pseudo-refugee who had a weakness for cross-eyed women, weed and conspiracy theories." Besides his physics, Isaac Newton was "literally looking for the Philosopher's Stone," poking his eye with a needle and blind for three days after staring at the sun too long. "You really wouldn't want to hang out with Karl Marx," writes Spalding, as he was a bit of a bruiser and drunkard. Besides finding and cataloging animals, the always hungry Charles Darwin would then eat them. Sigmund Freud was "more responsible for cocaine's use as a recreational drug than any other person in history." Thomas Edison was a "sort of proto-Elon Musk" who believed his "Spirit Phone" could reach the dead, and though Einstein loved sailing, "he was terrible at it." There are only a few women included: Émilie du Châtelet, a "scientific genius" in the 1700s who studied math and dueled a man in her underwear; Ada Lovelace; Marie Curie; and Maya Angelou, whose life was "bonkers" in a good way. Others scrutinized by Spalding include Confucius, Napoleon, Mozart, Franklin, Byron, and Hemingway. Don't miss the footnotes; they're a hoot. An entertaining and informative collection. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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