"Imagine: How Creativity Works" by Jonah Lehrer
This book fascinated me. I have read half of Lehrer’s first book How We Decide which mostly focused on decision-making patterns. (Well, at least I thought so. I never finished it, but I need to). Sure, the author came under major fire a few months back for falsifying quotes from this book while talking about Bob Dylan. You can read that scandal here. I knew all that before reading this book. To be honest, this book wasn’t deleted from my shelf because I really did want to see what point Lehrer would have with imagination and creativity. Also, I really didn’t care about the part with Bob Dylan. (Yes, I think authors should have journalistic integrity and so forth, but it’s Bob Dylan. I got the point about including his story in this book). Movies have been made to think of the “inception” of an idea, and I was very interested to hear more. Within the book, Lehrer details different companies and people who have had Eureka! moments. I was most interested in the chapter about 3M since my husband just got a job there recently. (Hopefully we can work out free Post-It’s and Scotch Tape for the holiday season, just hoping, ha!) The book is a good mix of real-life examples (the invention of the Swiffer) to the neuroscience of brains. As a person, I feel that I am a bit bonkers, so of course I feel like I am a creative person. I can’t play an instrument or draw, but I feel like I think differently than most people and take a different route when thinking of ideas. Lehrer details the creative culture in companies like Pixar and 3M and then delves into life in Elizabethan England where creativity (or stealing ideas) was running amok amongst Shakespeare, Marlowe, etc. I was highly entertained and really enjoyed this book. Lehrer even reminded me about the fact most people in the past used to think a creative idea was a gift from the Gods. Mere humans couldn’t possibly conjure a plausible idea without God-intervention. I really recommend this book even with all the controversy surrounding it.
Jen's Rating: ****