Extraordinary Minds: Portraits of 4 Exceptional Individuals and an Examination of Our Own Extraordinariness

Howard Gardner poses an important question: Is there a set of traits shared by all truly great achievers—those we deem extraordinary—no matter their field or the time period within which they did their important work? In an attempt to answer this question, Gardner first examines how most of us mature into more or less competent adults. He then examines closely four persons who lived unquestionably extraordinary lives—Mozart, Freud, Woolf, and Gandhi—using each as an exemplar of a different kind of extraordinariness.