Born on a Blue Day (2007)

With all due respect to Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and any living Nobel laureates, the most remarkable mind on the planet just might belong to Daniel Tammet, the 27-year-old author of Born on a Blue Day. One of only a handful of autistic savants (like Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man), he's been gifted with a phenomenal facility in math (memorizing pi to more than 22,000 places) and languages (conversant in at least 10). Also born with a rare neurogical condition called synesthesia, he perceives numbers and letters as shapes and colors (hence the title). Tammet displays a surprising level of sensitivity — and a refreshing lack of sentimentality — in an account that inspires even as it astonishes.

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