Extraordinary Minds represents a distillation of some of Howard Gardner's earlier work on cognitive processes and creativity, but written for a broader audience as part of the Basic Books “MasterMinds” series. This no doubt accounts for its curious tone, somewhere between popularized scholarship and self-help book, that some more sophisticated readers may find off-putting. The theme of the book has to do with that vexed question, the nature of genius, that is, whether genius, or “extraordinariness,” in human beings is something unique and inexplicable or merely an extreme end product of cognitive developmental processes (and social factors) that are common to all of us in varying degrees. Gardner clearly opts for the latter alternative, and to that end aims to “explain individuals who are truly exceptional,” to “search for the