Buzan's Book Of Genius

This book covers two separate topics. The first one is a self help guide on how to develop your own cognitive faculties and creativity. The second one is a ranking of the greatest minds in the history of mankind including short biographies of these 100 luminaries. When this book was first published in 1994, those were ambitious undertakings. Since then far better books have been written on both subjects.On the self help brain improvement bit, there have been tens of books written on the subject that are far better than this one. Some of them have been written by Buzan himself. For my part, I like the ones written by Michael Gelb, including  How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day  and  Discover Your Genius: How to Think Like History's Ten Most Revolutionary Minds . Gelb is the American successor of Buzan. He used the latter's foundation in terms of mindmapping and other related creativity tools. But, he has done a better job explaining and developing those methods than Buzan has.On ranking the 100 greatest minds of all time, Charles Murray's  Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950  does the same thing but 100 times better. Buzan comes up with strange and completely subjective parameters without any supporting data that do affect the quality of his ranking. As a case in point, Buzan ranks Muhammad Ali (the boxer!) as the 32nd greatest mind of all times. Other odd choices include Salvador Dali in 36th place, Walt Disney in 42nd place, and Maria Montessori in 54th place. All of these are way ahead of Carl Jung (63d), Stephen Hawking (64th), Galileo (65th), John Stuart Mill (90th), Rene Descartes (92nd), and Benedict de Spinoza (100th). You can't be serious. This ranking is laughable for someone who conveys himself to be an authority on the history of the greatest minds. Charles Murray methodology is so much more thorough, and scholarly credible. His results are coherent. In short, Murray's book renders the second part of Buzan's book completely obsolete. Within this second part of the book, you are just left with mildly interesting biographies on these personalities. But, you can get just as good or better info on those from any encyclopedias.

Definitely not a work of genius, or even a responsible approach to the subject. Buzan is master of buzzwords. Data on geniuses is wholly selective, and appears to be chosen merely to bolster Buzan's inadequately documented theories. This is a coffee-table 'fun' book disguised as psychology (it is hardly even pop psychology). If Buzan was in the Wild West, I imagine, however, he would have made a fortune selling 'snake oil.'One of the best books on genius is still Eysenck's eponymous study; but for an attractive light read, Harold Bloom is delightful and his reach doesn't exceed his grasp (unlike Buzan). Miller's Insights of Genius is a little weightier. For stimulating profiles of great minds, the unassuming paperback by Mason Currey, Daily Rituals, is inspiring and a delight to read (Buzan's entries look more like cut-and-pastes from Wikipedia). For serious self-improvement, I'd recommend distancing oneself from Buzan's flim-flam (studies show mind-mapping is fairly limited in its potential: compare concept-mapping). Eysenck delineates the underlying qualities of genius: psychological studies (authored in peer-reviewed psychology journals rather than by inspirational speakers like Mr Buzan) can provide more definitive pointers.

My boyfriend loved it, thanks 😀

Chef d’oeuvre

Libro in perfette condizioni.Assolutamente da leggere e avere se siete degli appassionati di Buzan e delle sue mappe mentali.