There's probably a legitimate question about how individuals with superior cognitive abilities can be made to feel less unwelcome in a culture that for the most part doesn't understand (and in some cases can't even recognize) their gifts. But this author does not provide it. Instead, we get blanket condemnations of teachers as incompetent self-serving knuckleheads; comparison of normally intelligent individuals to "retards" (his word) because they are as many IQ points below him as the average people are above the borderline competent; and gripes about government policies that tax the smart and the rich to give things to those who won't work to attain them on their own initiative -- this kind of thing shows where the author's heart is. He is angry. He wants you to understand his anger. He wants you to appreciate his anger. And he wants to validate his anger by encouraging you to feel it too.



Do not take him up on his invitation. Every minute that you, the potential reader, spend in a state of anger over the perceived injustices in your life is a wasted minute that you might have used building your intellectual ability to even higher levels and ultimately putting it to profitable use.



As I read, I kept hoping a note of cheer and optimism would crop up somewhere, but I hadn't seen it by the time I quit reading a little less than halfway through. Is this truly how the author thinks he making best use of the mental abilities and creativity that he attributes to himself? Most of the extremely smart people I have known just sidestep irritations and obstructions in order to get on with life, using their intellectual gifts to build the world in which they wish to live. I hope the author eventually achieves that kind of confidence in his abilities and abandons scatter-casting disdain that is unwelcome from any human being, let alone those of superior intelligence. This book is page after page of cursing the darkness while a million candles are left unlit. This book is a trip through a sewer in a glass-bottom boat while the tour guide narrates enthusiastically, "This could all be yours."



Those smart enough to read and understand all the reviews for this book will probably recognize those last comparisons, which I borrowed from writers with far greater insight than the author can muster.



This review was too long, huh? Didn't read every word and skipped to the last 'graph? Get over yourself. Superior intelligence confers not only the ability but also the responsibility to think clearly about the things that are important to you. If you let the author live rent-free in your brain, his book will impede your progress toward that goal.



(Edited to simplify some longish phrases and fix punctuation.)