Biographic: Beethoven

The Biographics series presents an entirely new way of looking at the lives of the world's greatest thinkers and creatives. It takes the 50 defining facts, dates, thoughts, habits, and achievements of each subject, and uses infographics to convey each of them in vivid snapshots. The result is a quickfire journey through truths and trivia that is the most entertaining way to follow in the footsteps of the men and women whose lives have most influenced our own.

Each Biographic title is designed to be as entertaining as it is informative. Timelines not only pinpoint significant dates, but set them in the context and culture of their times. Dynamic maps locate biographical waymarks alongside other points of interest. Flow-charts and bubble-diagrams depict working processes and styles, and character traits are illuminated by visual comparisons. Biographics blend the essential with the trivial. They paint portraits by numbers, which you seem to learn with your eyes and not your brain. Packed with facts, they are the essential guides to the paths that led to greatness.

Most people know that Ludwig van Beethoven(1770-1827) was a German composer, a musical prodigy whose Symphony No. 5 is recognisable the world over from its opening four notes. What, perhaps, they don't know is that he was almost completely deaf for nearly half his life; that his father would often lie about when Beethoven was born to make his talents seem even more astonishing; that he wrote a sonata to be played with building implements and called it the 'Hammer-Klavier Sonata'; and that he dedicated works to Napoleon and a dead poodle. "Biographic: Beethoven" presents an instant impression of his life, work and legacy, with an array of irresistible facts and figures converted into infographics to reveal the composer behind the compositions.