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Rating: 
Summary: Gigantic Genius Gone Goofy
Review: You will become ga ga admiring the staggeringly stupendous intellect of super-precocious child prodigy William James Sidis in this excellent biography. He was an academic mega-genius whose social ineptitude in society is profoundly disturbing.
Sidis was named in honor of the famous Harvard University philosopher/psychologist William James. The last name of William James Sidis was a palindrome: it could be spelled the same forward as well as backwards. Similarly and ironically his mind was palindromic: in the realm of cerebralization and intellectual thought there may have been no greater a prodigious potential in the history of the world ( rivaling Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, Plato, Socrates, etc. ). Tragically, the mind-boggling potential of Sidis was predominantly unfulfilled. Palindromic Sidis was a radical of socially aberrant behavior. He was a prodigy in reverse who revolted from the extravagant expectations thrust upon him. Consequently Sidis went from "great expectations" to "great expectorations". He was socially spit upon, chastised and shunned as an adult for his eccentrically bizarre behabior. He was the Ultima Thule of lost talent performing such menial jobs as being a janitor. He was a contradiction of intellectual and behavioral dyslexia. He was analogous to computer overload: akin to HAL in the classic sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey": super spaced out and gone awry. When one is an extreme case of extreme cases they may very well beome a social basket case.
I can deeply empathize with William James Sidis because I have resided in the socially isolated stratosphere of extreme intellectual genius my entire life. I have been descibed as being "too brilliant for my own good". Intense social introversion and extreme hypersensitivity do not mutually commingle with the ultra-psychological stress imposed upon a genius when other individuals are too demanding, too scornful, too mocking and too unsympathetically impersonal.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting read, here is where to find more...
Review: I've read this book once and I always enjoy leafing through it. However, I am always saddened that so much that Mr. Sidis did was lost (for example his science fiction story). A group of us individuals have started compiling information on him and are in the process of getting his "The Animate and th Inanimate" online for all to peruse. One and all are invited to email to get more information. Good day. [Thanks also to the reviewer below for the recommendation for the book "Accidental Genius"]
Rating:
Summary: Interesting read, here is where to find more...
Review: I've read this book once and I always enjoy leafing through it. However, I am always saddened that so much that Mr. Sidis did was lost (for example his science fiction story). A group of us individuals have started compiling information on him and are in the process of getting his "The Animate and th Inanimate" online for all to peruse. One and all are invited to email to get more information. Good day. [Thanks also to the reviewer below for the recommendation for the book "Accidental Genius"]
Rating:
Summary: A book that makes you think...
Review: This is definitely a good read. Although I have just barely finished reading half of the book, I felt compelled to say something about it. Sometimes it just pains my heart to see how the society, in a sense, failed the genius. It comes natural for "normal" people (people with such genes tend to have an edge in survival perspective in terms of natural selection) to deride and hurt (sometimes on purpose, sometimes unwittingly) a person who is superior in non-social matters but lacks adequate development in social matters. William James Sidis clearly fell victim in this category. Also, this biography tells us that intelligence needs to be accompanied by wisdom to fulfill its due expectations. Clearly W J Sidis is very intelligent (intelligent in some specific areas like maths and languages); but he does not seem to be very wise in a broader, higher sense; that is, his intelligence helps him see "trees" in a much clearer way than his fellow beings, but lack of wisdom fails him in seeing the "forest/wood", i.e. the BIG PICTURE. His own version of a constitution in a fictitious "perfect" (in his eyes) society (Hesperia), notwithstanding sophisticated in logical rules and bearing some other merits in terms of form, is naive and myopic in content. In a way, he is very stubborn to have such notions as "The word art means very little to me" and "why will people waste so much energy on statuary, painting, drawing, etching and the like" (p. 109 of the book). Frankly, I fail to note similar traits in other accomplished prodigies like Stuart Mill, Wiener, Russell and Einstein. -- Lack of appreciation (and even contempt) for other forms of achievements in humanity will sooner or later limit a prodigy's success in one way or another because it denotes an unbalanced development among numerous dimensions of human nature. As of the root of the Sidis "tragedy" (saying tragedy might be overstated), clearly the way his parents raised him contributed largely to the outcome. And the inappropriate amount of attention had been directed to him since his very early childhood, a fatal error in comparison to the shrewd way John Stuart Mill was brought up by his father... I might have more to say when I finish the book.
Rating:
Summary: The only perfect life is one lived in seclusion.
Review: This is the second time that I've been drawn to this unique book. Having just enough in common with Billy Sidus (membership in two high IQ societies and extreme introversion) I can recognise the "ring of truth" to this account. I know from first hand experience how this society, especially the public schools, go out of their way to haze and torture the gifted and the "different"- no matter how hard one tries to keep a low profile. Indeed, Sidus's motto, "The only perfect life is one lived in seclusion" is also my own, learned from hard experience.
As for William James Sidus himself, here was a person who lectured on 4th dimensional mathematics at Harvard at the age of 11. It was said that he probably spoke every language of mankind- and actually invented entirely new languages of his own. He wrote the first book on cosmology that ever theorised the existance of black holes. He was the first to see the correlation of the 11 year sunspot cycle on both climate and human behavior. He wrote some of the first "alternative histories" of the United States (rejecting official proganda.) He had absolute contempt for capitalism and corporations (he seems to have been incapable of telling lies or exploiting other people.) He recognised the fundamental contribution of Native Americans to mainstream American culture long before anyone else. He was absolutely convinced not only that extraterestrial intelligence existed, but that it had to exist. He wrote seriously of Atlantis while "serious" scholars scoffed at the idea. He totally rejected formal theology and religion- while having no doubt that a higher power existed...
One of the chapters of this book is entitled "Sidis an Avatar?" While William Sidis himself would have automatically and violently rejected such a claim, I personally wonder if it might have not been close to the truth....
Rating:
Summary: The only perfect life is one lived in seclusion.
Review: This is the second time that I've been drawn to this unique book. Having just enough in common with Billy Sidus (membership in two high IQ societies and extreme introversion) I can recognise the "ring of truth" to this account. I know from first hand experience how this society, especially the public schools, go out of their way to haze and torture the gifted and the "different"- no matter how hard one tries to keep a low profile. Indeed, Sidus's motto, "The only perfect life is one lived in seclusion" is also my own, learned from hard experience.
As for William James Sidus himself, here was a person who lectured on 4th dimensional mathematics at Harvard at the age of 11. It was said that he probably spoke every language of mankind- and actually invented entirely new languages of his own. He wrote the first book on cosmology that ever theorised the existance of black holes. He was the first to see the correlation of the 11 year sunspot cycle on both climate and human behavior. He wrote some of the first "alternative histories" of the United States (rejecting official proganda.) He had absolute contempt for capitalism and corporations (he seems to have been incapable of telling lies or exploiting other people.) He recognised the fundamental contribution of Native Americans to mainstream American culture long before anyone else. He was absolutely convinced not only that extraterestrial intelligence existed, but that it had to exist. He wrote seriously of Atlantis while "serious" scholars scoffed at the idea. He totally rejected formal theology and religion- while having no doubt that a higher power existed...
One of the chapters of this book is entitled "Sidis an Avatar?" While William Sidis himself would have automatically and violently rejected such a claim, I personally wonder if it might have not been close to the truth....
Rating: 
Summary: not the most meticulous bio, but good nonetheless
Review: William James Sidis (1898-1944) was born to a psychologist with some unorthodox ideas about child rearing, attended Harvard at an absurdly young age, burned out at 14, and spent most of the rest of his life working menial jobs and living in poverty. Dubbed a ``failed prodigy'' by the popular press, he lived out his years as an eccentric and a recluse. Wallace's book, the only biography of this most enigmatic of prodigies, gives us a balanced look at Sidis' up-bringing and a somewhat revisionist look at his later life. Sidis apparently was hard at work on manuscripts of various sorts even during his later years; this book is to my knowledge the only one that gives an account of that later work, which dealt with American Indians. There is no better source of information on Sidis and his tortured life. This biography is not an authoritative academic biography, and it does not claim to be. Rather, it is a fascinating popular account of an amazing and dramatic life.
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