A refreshing exploration of creativity that’s expansive in cultural scope and packed with concrete exercises.
A cognitive scientist consolidates insights into creativity in a manual to achieve great ideas.
Newman, who teaches at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, has written an accessible and entertaining book that uproots the belief that great ideas stem from “innate talent reserved for the chosen few.” Breakthrough perspectives don’t exist in “some distant, elusive realm,” observes Newman, but are right in front of us, if we’re prepared to harness the conceptual tools, which are shared with clarity, evidence, positive energy, and actionable steps. The narrative is structured by archeology analogies: surveying, gridding, digging, and sifting. With a light deftness, the author moves through these enlightening sections and takes his own medicine by systematically, and with many reiterations, expressing each facet of the creative challenge. Sprinkled throughout the book are examples of cutting-edge research, pop-culture nuggets, and brief stories of artistic processes. Newman spares no aspect of human creation in his research, writing about Einstein’s path to his theory of relativity (embrace uncomfortable abstraction), Karen Wynn Fonstad’s mapping of Middle-earth, Björk’s musical journey, the composition of K-Pop songs, and Jordan Peele rewriting Get Out more than 400 times. He moves smoothly across painting, music, movies, cooking, writing, business, and his own life, and he gives guidance on how creatives should use AI. Although some lessons may seem obvious to those familiar with creative literature, and though some of the exercises may seem repetitive or contrived, Newman writes so efficiently and skillfully that this comprehensive work is a pleasure to read. Clever phrases and concepts such as “Burn the cabin down” and “The wisdom of grumpy Yoda” will stay with you and help you produce original work.
A refreshing exploration of creativity that’s expansive in cultural scope and packed with concrete exercises.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781668026007
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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