What drives big thinkers, creators, and leaders who achieve success on their own terms? Jamie McMillin wanted to find out, hoping her quest would help her raise and educate her own two children.
She delved into biographies of luminaries including Margaret Mead, Pearl Buck, Marie Curie, Louis Armstrong, Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, and Beatrix Potter looking for educational similarities. She found plenty. She also discovered common threads in their upbringing and experiences. These and many other great people may not have been geniuses, but they had the drive to pursue their particular passions with determination and optimism. Although different in many ways, they tended to seek out mentors, find inspiration in nature, creatively overcome adversity, and seek self-education.
McMillin has written Legendary Learning
In the book and on the author’s site you’ll find stories of Frederick Douglass teaching himself to write in the shipyards using a piece of chalk, Alexander Graham Bell listening to wheat grow, and Mary Leakey in a convent classroom frothing at the mouth thanks to illicit use of soap. Learning from history has never been approached quite this way, through the childhoods of history’s fascinating people.
Read this one with a highlighter. You won’t be sorry.
A copy of the book was provided for this review.
