"Smart Reading" contributes to the field of American Studies by investigating how the advent of a science of intelligence---beginning with IQ tests---influenced American writers after the turn of the twentieth century. Historically speaking, such a science marked a shift in our understanding of intelligence because it was no longer a reflection of one's education, social class, or biography. It came to be a fixed biological fact. Drawing on theory in disciplines as diverse as cognitive science, literary studies, geography, philosophy and sociology, this project argues that the language of intelligence therefore depends on the science (and pseudoscience) of race. Whereas the concept of intelligence has been deployed to restrict access of racial Others to American institutions, the nation has depended on those racial Others to define the terms of intelligence. Furthermore, the American experience of different ethnic groups has helped to congeal a phenomenological theory of intelligence that takes into account the relationship between a subject and her lived space. Specifically, this dissertation focuses on the ethnic groups of Jews, African Americans and American Indians. Key primary texts include Three Lives by Gertrude Stein, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, Home to Harlem by Claude McKay, Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama, The Surrounded by D'Arcy McNickle, Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth, and Neuromancer by William Gibson.