"The remarkable people you meet in this book are inspirational. You do feel as if you have met them because Rowan Hooper has interviewed each of them and writes beautifully about his encounters
. These stories include people of extraordinary ability in areas such as chess, mathematics, music and sport, which have long been the focus of talent research, but also in novel areas including bravery, resilience and even sleeping and happiness. As a scientist, what I liked best is the clever way in which Rowan Hooper interweaves his interviews with the latest research in each area. As a writer for the
New Scientist for more than a decade, he knows a lot about the science of extraordinary ability and writes clearly about it."
--Robert Plomin, MRC Research Professor of Behavioural Genetics, Institute for Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, and author of G is for Genes: The Impact of Genetics on Education and Achievement"Loved the book. Very thought provoking."
--Wayne McGregor, Choreographer"Terrifically entertaining. Hooper is that precious thing; an easy, fluent, and funny scientist. The message from this upbeat, clever, feel good book is that we all have greater capacity than we realize. Spectacularly enjoyable."
--The London Times"The range of human activities, and abilities, covered in Rowan Hooper's study is astonishing and inspiring. It's a reminder of the incomparable adaptability that evolution has brought about in the human body and mind, and I found myself frequently wondering: what else are we capable of? How much further can we reach? And not least: how can we make sure the human race survives long enough for all our potential to unfold? The whole study is enthralling."
--Philip Pullman, New York Times bestselling author of His Dark Materials series "This is a scream, in several ways: it's highly entertaining, but it's kind of painful to realize I will never be superhuman. Dang, eh?"
--Margaret Atwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale"In this highly readable and well-researched book, Rowan Hooper, an evolutionary biologist by training
, sets out to "demystify people at the extremes" of everything from intelligence to running to sleeping. As promoted in a recent spate of popular books, one appealing account of success says that all that really distinguishes highly accomplished people from the rest of us is the environment: having the opportunity and resources to pursue a dream. Nurture certainly does play an important role in success, but as Hooper explains in engaging detail in
Superhuman, drawing on insightful interviews with people at the peak of success to illustrate, it is becoming increasingly clear from scientific research on expert performance that there is more to the story. Genetic makeup not only underpins basic abilities and capacities that bear on complex skills--it influences the environments that we seek out and create for ourselves.
Superhuman will help shift the debate about the origins of exceptional performance beyond an anachronistic nature vs. nurture perspective and towards a recognition that it no longer even make sense to try to separate these two types of influence. The book is essential reading for anyone who has marveled at exceptional human performance and wondered what explains it."
--Zach Hambrick, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Director of the Expertise Lab, Michigan State University"Haven't read a book so simultaneously inspiring and geekily fascinating in ages."
--Emma Hooper, author of Our Homesick Songs and Emma and Otto "At one level this is science writing as freak show: Hooper tracks down people who run insane distances (seven consecutive marathons, for instance, at roughly three hours per marathon), remain unimaginably alert (from F1 drivers to Zen monks), memorise pi to umpteen places, and so on. But underneath the highly entertaining cor blimeys he is investigating something serious and timely: the controversial relationship between genes and environment, and the
physiological, intellectual, genetic and ethical limits of being human."
--James McConnachie, Sunday Times of London, Book of the Year"
Superhuman is an incredibly readable and endlessly interesting book. Perhaps most importantly, it is an inspiring book."
--Christopher Kemp, Science
