A review by k_gregz
Children of the Atom by Wilmar H. Shiras

5.0

This book has all the things I like: gifted kids, cats, and a heavy dose of theistic philosophy. That last one caught me off guard because it is so not the norm in gifted children discourse. This book probably will get its own chapter because it is so unique from other gifted books as a pre-Sputnik portrayal of gifted kids. Post-Sputnik gifted discourse is primarily concerned with science and training children to be national scientific resources, perhaps weapons. But this book is a post-WW2 pre-Sputnik portrayal, and, as such, it condemns over reliance on science. As it says, people who reason only based on science brought about the Bomb, so we need to be wary of that. The biggest threat to this pre-X men school for gifted youngsters is a gifted child who reasons by science/ intellect alone and gives no credence to feeling, intuition, or sensation. The other children treat him as a psychological project and give him assignments to develop his psyche more fully. This is where the book gets most bizarre because the child is assigned to stare at an apple seed in imitation of early Mystics and own a pet to teach him how to love. These exercises are combined with reading assignments by CS Lewis, Aquinas, and Aristotle. On the other side, the second threat to the school is a television pastor who condemns them as abominations of Satan. He is quickly dismissed as a fool who relies on feelings alone without intellect. The message of the book is clear: we should not rely on intellect, feelings, intuition, or sensation alone, but instead need to be fully developed thinkers who give equal credence to science, philosophy, languages, the arts, and mathematics. Is it a little heavy handed in its endorsement of Thomism or Thomistic Philosphy? Absolutely, but I loved it, mostly because it is totally bizarre and unusual to read about a group of gifted kids sitting around debating Poe's Philosophy of Composition and Aquinas' Summa Theologica. Also, the cats.