Books, Arts & Manners: All in the Family

Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives, by Frank J. Sulloway (Pantheon, 653 pp., $30)

FRANK Sulloway’s Born to Rebel arrives on a crest of imposing hype, with serious scholars comparing its importance to that of the works of Charles Darwin. For 26 years, this statistically inclined MIT historian labored to uncover why it was Darwin who originated the theory of natural selection. He built a database of 6,566 scientists and other historical figures from the sixteenth through the early twentieth century. Through his study of this database, the answer became obvious to him: Darwin was the fourth child born in his family. To Mr. Sulloway, much of history is literally sibling rivalry writ large, an eternal struggle between conservative, authoritarian, and closed-minded “first-borns” and liberal, rebellious, altruistic, and open-minded “later-borns.” (Pop quiz: Name Sulloway’s birth rank and politics.)

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Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives, by Frank J. Sulloway (Pantheon, 653 pp., $30)

FRANK Sulloway’s Born to Rebel arrives on a crest of imposing hype, with serious scholars comparing its importance to that of the works of Charles Darwin. For 26 years, this statistically inclined MIT historian labored to uncover why it was Darwin who originated the theory of natural selection. He built a database of 6,566 scientists and other historical figures from the sixteenth through the early twentieth century. Through his study of this database, the answer became obvious to him: Darwin was the fourth child born in his family. To Mr. Sulloway, much of history is literally sibling rivalry writ large, an eternal struggle between conservative, authoritarian, and closed-minded “first-borns” and liberal, rebellious, altruistic, and open-minded “later-borns.” (Pop quiz: Name Sulloway’s birth rank and politics.)