Off the Charts The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies

Ann Hulbert’s in-depth exploration of the lives of sixteen extraordinary children over the course of the past century casts new light on America’s current obsession with early achievement. The figures she profiles include math genius Norbert Wiener, founder of cybernetics; two girls whose fiction and poetry stirred debate in the 1920s; the movie superstar Shirley Temple; the African-American pianist and composer Philippa Schuyler; the chess champion Bobby Fischer; computer pioneers and “prodigious savants” with autism; and musical prodigies, present and past. Hulbert probes the changing roles of parents and teachers as well as of psychologists and a curious press. Above all, she delves into the feelings of the prodigies themselves, whose stories so intriguingly raise hopes about untapped human potential and questions about how best to nurture it.

ANN HULBERT is the author of Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children and The Interior Castle: The Art and Life of Jean Stafford. Her articles and reviews have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and The Atlantic, where she is the literary editor. She is a graduate of Harvard and spent a year at Cambridge University. She lives with her husband in Washington, D.C.