Fragments of Genius: The Strange Feats of Idiots Savants

by Michael J.A. Howe

This text provides an account of "idiots savants" - those remarkable individuals who are simultaneously retarded yet capable of quite extraordinary achievements. Their talents include outstanding artistic and musical achievement, mental arithmetic at incredible speed, and calendar calculating, involving extremely difficult questions about calendar dates. Michael Howe's findings encourage the reader to reconsider existing views about the manner in which human skills are organized and contradicts the widely accepted belief that a person's different abilities are interdependent and centrally controlled.

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 2, 1989

Reviews

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting subject matter. Slightly repetitive at times but acceptably so, given the format. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in exploring ways in which the human mind might work by examining a subset of neural and social abnormalities