The rivalry between the brilliant seventeenth-century Italian architects Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini is the stuff of legend. Enormously talented and ambitious artists, they met as contemporaries in the building yards of St. Peter's in Rome, became the greatest architects of their era by designing some of the most beautiful buildings in the world, and ended their lives as bitter enemies. Engrossing and impeccably researched, full of dramatic tension and breathtaking insight, "The Genius in the Design" is the remarkable tale of how two extraordinary visionaries schemed and maneuvered to get the better of each other and, in the process, created the spectacular Roman cityscape of today.

This essay explores the development of Salvador Dali, from the early phases of childhood, the bizarre and complex aims of his first experiments, to his absorption into high society of Paris in the 1930s, and his inclusion in the Surrealist movement from 1928 to 1939. The essay focuses on the makeup of a provocative and original personality acutely reflexive, intelligent and pathologically driven. As a creative signifier of considerable and generative impact, Dali can be identified as a unique sounding board for his own and succeeding times.