In this engaging book, David Galenson formulates a complex question about modern art that he tries to answer with statistics, analysis, and exposition, enlivened with a rich sprinkling of well-chosen quotes. Posing an initial question “At what stage of their lives have modern painters normally done their best work?,” he finds that this age varies widely from artist to artist. This leads to the central problem: “is it by chance that some have made their greatest contributions early in their careers, and others late in theirs, or is there some general explanation that accounts for the variation?” (p. 4).