From the acclaimed journalist and author of Difficult Women, a timely and entertaining take-down of the genius myth, exploring the surprising history of invention, inspiration and distortion by which some lives are elevated to 'greatness' - and the unexpected consequences for us all.
*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
About the Author
Helen Lewis is a staff writer at the Atlantic, and a former deputy editor of the New Statesman. She has written for the Guardian, Sunday Times, New York Times and Vogue. She is a regular host of BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, a regular panellist on the News Quiz and Saturday Review, and a paper reviewer on The Andrew Marr Show. She was the 2018/19 Women in the Humanities Honorary Writing Fellow at Oxford University.
Industry Reviews
A brilliant, timely and compulsively readable book. With her characteristic combination of deep reporting and lightness of touch, 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
This is the book we need right now. Smart, funny and full of surprises, The Genius Myth takes aim at our cultish worship of Great Men. An indispensable companion to our times.
— Caroline Criado Perez
Typically lucid, funny and fascinating. Not so much a debunking of "genius" as a highly entertaining exploration of why we want it to exist.
— Adam Buxton
Helen Lewis argues that "genius" lies in the eye of the beholder. Well, my own eyes saw genius when they read this book.
— Lucy Worsley
Lewis issues an effective call for a more carefully tempered understanding of genius in our precarious times, one that celebrates creativity, innovation, and achievement rather than idolizing a maker’s rarity and eccentricity. By degrees unsettling, amusing, and prescient; a much-needed audit of a consuming idea.
— Kirkus Reviews
[A] witty book… Lewis is brilliantly perceptive
— Observer
