I first came across William James Sidis back around 2000 on the internet, on the site by Dan Mahony. Unfortunately that site, sidis dot net, in all its Web 1.0 glory, is slowly dying since the 2016 death of Mahony. This is the only book-length biography of Sidis, written without notes, citations, or a bibliography by one Amy Wallace, a churner-outer of nonfiction books of trivial quality. It is well-written, well-researched, and well-interviewed, but it is not scholarly and a little too chatty. But, with Mahony’s death and the death of all people remotely connected to Sidis, this will probably be the best biography we’ll ever get. Mahony collected some fine research and tracked down everything he could about Sidis, from newspaper accounts to memoirs to interviews and even the papers saved by his family members, especially Sidis’s sister. But, aside from collecting it and presenting it, he never truly analyzed it or synthesized it, and never produced a biography in any real sense. Maybe someone will.

So, how is the book. It is a chronological and sometimes thematical narrative biography of William James Sidis, a child prodigy, son of Boris Sidis, a pioneering psychologist, and Sarah Sidis, a stern mother with an unused M.D. (gotten at a time when few women even attended college), and godson of the august scholar William James. Sidis had prodigous memory skills, learned languages easily, read voraciously and precociously, and, most notedly, had tremendous mathematical skills. He graduated Harvard as a teen, lectured on the fourth dimension, and even published an obscure book on cosmological physics. And, by age twenty or so, did nothing with it. He disdained academia, he hated his mother, he never mentioned his father. He retreated into menial jobs as a comptometer operator, devolved into socialistic and anarchistic politics, lived cheek by jowl, wrote drivelous history, and, most famously, or infamously, collected and wrote about street car transfer ticket collecting (inventing a hobby and study he coined “peridromophily”). Shunning his childhood publicity and a conscientious objector, he died young and mostly alone at the tail end of the Second World War. It’s a sad but engrossing tale. As a “gifted” kid myself, I understand some of his hobbies and self-world. But his total retreat from manners, society, and the like I find inexplicable.

Nice images (more on Mahony’s site), index, but no notes or bibliography (again, the late Mahony has a sort of bibliography on his link-deathing website). Good, interesting, but could be so much better. The thrust of Wallace, and Mahony, is that the prodigy didn’t burn out and destroy his gifts, he just channelled them into unexplainable anti-social pursuits. Creeping under the surface is a non-condemnation condemnation of his odd upbringing; that Sidis’s parents raised a damaged prodigy. Let the reader decide. ( )

The life of William James Sidis (1898-1944), wizard of mathematics, languages and much else. Probably well endowed naturally, and was taught to love learning and reasoning by his parents. It is striking how much of this upbringing is regarded as standard in many environments today: Answering children's question seriously, talking to them as adults, learn them reasoning and principles rather than isolated facts and rigid rules. The author makes that case that WJS suffered from a dysfunctional relationship between his parents, having to be socially together with older others, and above all from being hunted on by the tabloid press. Made substantial contributions to mathematical physics, but eventually he retreated into anonymity and menial jobs, although still an intellectual firework in the areas that he did not leave behind, like politics and the collection of streetcar transfers(!). Although eccentric he did not appear bitter. The moral is nevertheless to treat children seriously as learners, but let them be children. ( )

First edition