{"id":7162,"date":"2017-10-17T14:06:31","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T21:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=7162"},"modified":"2018-03-29T12:48:51","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T19:48:51","slug":"help-me-research-my-next-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/17\/help-me-research-my-next-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Help Me Research My Next Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m working on a new book about ultralearning, the style of aggressive self-education in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/myprojects\/mit-challenge-2\/\">MIT Challenge<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/myprojects\/the-year-without-english-2\/\">Year Without English<\/a>, and I\u2019d like your help.<\/p>\n<p>One of my goals in the book is to feature stories and examples of excellent self-directed learning. To do that, I\u2019m not only hunting down contemporary examples of people taking on interesting learning challenges like my own, but also historical examples of famous autodidacts.<\/p>\n<p>The best stories and examples tend to be the less well-known, which presents me with a tricky position\u2014the best examples to fill the book are necessarily going to be those I\u2019m going to have the hardest time finding out about!<\/p>\n<p>As a result, I\u2019d like to enlist your help in suggesting people I should research further. In particular, if you know any examples of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People who have engaged in learning challenges, or otherwise accomplished something impressive by virtue of being mostly self-taught.<\/li>\n<li>Historical autodidacts or people who had unique strategies for their own self-education.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Luckily my research has already brought me into contact with many of these people and I\u2019ve waded through a dozen or more biographies and profiles already. However, with your help I\u2019m hoping I might get introduced to some people who I wouldn\u2019t have otherwise considered.<\/p>\n<p>To save some time, here\u2019s a few historical autodidacts\/impressive learners I\u2019ve already researched or plan on researching in more detail:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Benjamin_Franklin\">Benjamin Franklin<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Albert_Einstein\">Albert Einstein<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Richard_Feynman\">Richard Feynman<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Daniel_Dennett\">Daniel Dennett<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vincent_van_Gogh\">Vincent van Gogh<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Leonardo_da_Vinci\">Leonardo Da Vinci<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_Edison\">Thomas Edison<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bobby_Fischer\">Bobby Fischer<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Leonhard_Euler\">Leonhard Euler<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paul_Erd%C5%91s\">Paul Erdos<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Daniel_Everett\">Daniel Everett<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michelangelo\">Michaelangelo<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Avicenna\">Ibn Sina<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elon_Musk\">Elon Musk<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steve_Jobs\">Steve Jobs<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bill_Gates\">Bill Gates<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Terence_Tao\">Terrence Tao<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jack_Ma\">Jack Ma<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chien-Shiung_Wu\">Wu Jian-Xiong<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Given the skew of this existing list, if you can recommend any impressive women autodidacts or from non-Western countries, that would definitely be a bonus. My goal is to cast as wide a net as possible so I don\u2019t end up circling the same familiar examples.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to these historical examples, I\u2019m also open to suggestions of contemporary people who have accomplished things through their own self-directed learning. I won\u2019t provide a list of those I\u2019ve reviewed already for fear of spoiling too much of the book, but if you have any suggestions for that too, please write it below in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m working on a new book about ultralearning, the style of aggressive self-education in the MIT Challenge and Year Without English, and I\u2019d like your help. One of my goals in the book is to feature stories and examples of excellent self-directed learning. To do that, I\u2019m not only hunting down contemporary examples of people [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[682,2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-nc-learning","7":"category-news","8":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Help Me Research My Next Book - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/17\/help-me-research-my-next-book\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Help Me Research My Next Book - Scott H Young\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m working on a new book about ultralearning, the style of aggressive self-education in the MIT Challenge and Year Without English, and I\u2019d like your help. 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