From the creator of Brain Pickings, a kaleidoscopic and original illumination of the lives and ideas of half a dozen women artists, writers and scientists each of whose paths would influence the lives of those who followed. Genius is local, governed by the protective spirit of a place, embedded, nurtured by circumstances and moments that are random, uncalculated, errant, only later observed as fateful. In Figuring, Maria Popova gives us the lives of five American women--the astronomer Maria Mitchell, the feminist Margaret Fuller, the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, the poet Emily Dickinson, and the marine biologist Rachel Carson--who come to be possessed by genius, find original directions to pursue. Figuring traces the hesitant, uncertain arcs of their influences, intersections, and self-encounters as they coalesce into something previously unimagined, their aspirations unfold in the completeness of being.