Limits of Genius

A hilarious look at how the line between 'genius' and 'extremely lucky idiot' is finer than we'd like to admit.*The more you delve into the stories behind history's greatest names, the more you realise they have something in common: a mystifying lack of common sense. Take Marie Curie, famous for both discovering radioactivity and having absolutely zero lab safety protocols. Or Lord Byron, who literally took a bear *with him to university. Or James Glaisher, a hot-air balloon pioneer who nearly ended up as the world's first human satellite...

From Nikola Tesla falling in love with a pigeon to non-swimmer Albert Einstein's near-fatal love of sailing holidays,* The Limits of Genius * is filled with examples of the so-called brightest and best of humanity doing, to put it bluntly, some really dumb shit. These are the stories that deserve to be told but never are: the hilarious, regrettable and downright baffling lesser-known achievements of the men and women who somehow managed to bungle their way into our history books.