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If, as David Pratt states in the opening chapter, "You are 600 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to win a Nobel Prize," why did he bother to write a book about the secrets of Nobel Laureates? The answer lies in the author's research that addresses the question of whether Nobel Prize winners have something in common that increases the odds of winning the prize. What type of family do they come from? Do they have a support system, and if so, what does it consist of? Does their country play a role? Are there any common personality traits? What role does intelligence play? The answers to such questions arrive through a combination of Nobel Laureate stories, as told by the author, and the winners' own reflections.
Nobel Laureates is reminiscent of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. Like Csikszentmihalyi and Gladwell, Pratt uses an engaging writing style to make academic research both interesting and easy to comprehend. In addition, readers of all three books will notice that they share a similar theme. While Pratt's research focuses more on the winners of science-based Nobel Prizes than the other categories, he takes care to compare and contrast the different explanation of success among winners in various categories. A sense of curiosity about what breeds success is the only prerequisite you need to add this enlightening book to your reading list.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review