A fascinating collection of essays from twenty-seven of the world's most interesting scientists about the moments and events in their childhoods that set them on the paths that would define their lives.

What makes a child decide to become a scientist?

• For Robert Sapolsky--Stanford professor of biology--it was an argument with a rabbi over a passage in the Bible.
• Physicist Lee Smolin traces his inspiration to the volume of Einstein's work he picked up as a diversion from heartbreak.
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist and the author of Flow, found his calling through Descartes.
• Mary Catherine Bateson--author of Composing a Life--discovered that she wanted to be an anthropologist while studying Hebrew.
• Janna Levin--author of How the Universe Got Its Spots--felt impelled by the work of Carl Sagan to know more.

Murray Gell-Mann, Nicholas Humphrey, Freeman Dyson, Daniel C. Dennett, Lynn Margulis, V. S. Ramachandran, Howard Gardner, Richard Dawkins, and more than a dozen others tell their own entertaining and often inspiring stories of the deciding moment. Illuminating memoir meets superb science writing in essays that invite us to consider what it is--and isn't--that sets the scientific mind apart and into action.