A review by jan_coco_day
Edison's Ghosts: The Untold Weirdness of History's Greatest Geniuses by Katie Spalding

funny informative lighthearted

4.0

This is the kind of pop science book that will either make you very popular or very unpopular at parties, depending on what kind of parties you attend.

My favorite facts from this book:
-Pythagoras was afraid of beans
-Ada Lovelace lost multiple fortunes by gambling
-Freud took so much cocaine, he thought numbers were trying to kill him
-NASA had to trick male astronauts into wearing appropriately-sized condoms (for disposal of liquid waste) by changing "small," "medium," and "large" to "large," "gigantic," and "humongous"
-Einstein's neighbors had to rescue him from drowning because he loved sailing but was abysmal at it.

Favorite quote: 

We in the West are mostly still recovering from centuries of essentially banning most people from stuff that you tend to need if you're going to make history...and while absolutely some women and minorities and working class people did manage to beat the odds and change the world in their own ways, they tend to be remembered today as, well, precisely that: the ones who beat the odds." 

And that's why I think a book like this, while entertaining, is important. No one is an expert in everything. In fact, some geniuses can probably stand to be taken down a peg or two when you consider the entirety of their life outside of their specific area of expertise.