Creativity Books - Page 5

Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy

Eric G. Wilson

Amazon Price: $9.60 List Price: $12.00 Not yet published By: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Mental Health -> Emotions
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Creativity
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Emotions

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Americans are addicted to happiness. When we’re not popping pills, we leaf through scientific studies that take for granted our quest for happiness, or read self-help books by everyone from armchair philosophers and clinical psychologists to the Dalai Lama on how to achieve a trouble-free life: Stumbling on Happiness; Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment; The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living. The titles themselves draw a stark portrait of the war on melancholy.  More than any other generation, Americans of today believe in the transformative power of positive thinking. But who says we’re supposed to be happy? Where does it say that in the Bible, or in the Constitution? In Against Happiness, the scholar Eric G. Wilson argues that melancholia is necessary to any thriving culture, that it is the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation—and that it is the force underlying original insights. Francisco Goya, Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, and Abraham Lincoln were all confirmed melancholics. So enough Prozac-ing of our brains. Let’s embrace our depressive sides as the wellspring of creativity. What most people take for contentment, Wilson argues, is living death, and what the majority takes for depression is a vital force. In Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Wilson suggests it would be better to relish the blues that make humans people.

The Courage to Create

Rollo May

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton & Company Amazon Marketplace: 58 new & used starting at $4.76

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Creativity
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Intelligence
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Creativity & Genius

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

"Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism." 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Courage to Create has been on my to-read pile for quite some time. Strongly recommended by several friends, I was very curious to read it. This despite an admitted suspicion of books that address creativity from a psychological perspective.

I found the book interesting and relatively clearly written. May resisted the temptation to pad out the work, and its 140 pages are perfectly adequate to make its point. The book is divided into seven sections; they run from "The Courage to Create" to "A Passion for Form".

I found the sections relevant to creativity and the unconscious the least interesting parts of the book. This may be, in part, because the book was early enough (1975) that many of the concepts in those chapters feel a little bit like open doors. Courage to Create has been a very influential book and over the years a number of its themes have been picked up and expanded on-- sometimes in a more complete way. I was quite interested in May's thoughts linking form to creativity. Again, they weren't new ideas, but I found he articulated them clearly and with some perspectives that I hadn't considered until reading the book.

Despite my reservations I would still recommend the book to readers interested in the roots of creation and creative ability. It isn't a lengthy read, and requires more time for consideration than it does for the actual reading.

Editorial Review:

"A lucid and highly concentrated analysis of the creative process. . . . [May] describes the requisites for the creative encounter and the moment of the 'breakthrough'."—Saturday Review

What if imagination and art are not, as many of us might think, the frosting on life, but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms, rather than the other way around? In this trenchant volume, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement.

The Red Rubber Ball at Work: Elevate Your Game Through the Hidden Power of Play

Kevin Carroll

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill Amazon Marketplace: 63 new & used starting at $7.08

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Business Life -> Motivation & Self-Improvement
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Motivational
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Organizational Behavior -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

How do you ignite creativity, problem solving, and risk taking to score big in business? According to bestselling author Kevin Carroll, it�s child�s play!

. .

Former 76ers athletic trainer Kevin Carroll, has turned his childhood passion for playing ball into a bestselling franchise. In this fun and thoughtful follow-up to his bestselling Rules of the Red Rubber Ball (2007), Carroll switches the playing field to the workplace,. where innovation, motivation, engagement, and teamwork are the headline issues. Drawing on �play profiles� from thought leaders, change agents, and business leaders, he. explains how to bring a sense of play into the workplace to stimulate creativity, encourage risk-taking, achieve goals--and have a great time doing it.

. .

Fully illustrated, with 31 profiles of successful. �players� including ESPN president George Bodenheimer, bestselling authors Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell, Food. Network host Duff Goldman, South Bronx activist Majora Carter, renowned author Paulo Coehlo, and many others.

The Artist's Way at Work: Riding the Dragon

Mark Bryan, Julia Cameron, Catherine A. Allen

Amazon Price: $11.65 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 80 new & used starting at $0.58

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Business Life -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Business Life -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Job Hunting & Careers -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

After the publication of the bestselling book The Artists' Way, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan, co-creators of the country's most successful course on creativity, were often told that their techniques helped people achieve their business goals. This spurred them to refine the methods to help people perform more creatively and effectively at work. The program is revealed in The Artists' Way at Work: a twelve-week encounter with your own ingenuity, struggles, strengths and dreams -- as well as the political guidance to enable you to get things done.

Through powerful self-assessment exercises with intriguing titles such as "Power Inside vs. Power Outside," "Developing Creative Continuity," and "Finding Your Truth," readers learn to release their creative spirit at work and tap reserves of energy, vision, and passion. The Artists' Way at Work will help you excel in your job, launch the business of your dreams, or find the career you love. Best of all, you will learn to "live in the paradox" -- to develop a personal philosophy of excellence that sustains you, whatever the future holds.

The processes in this book are rooted in cutting-edge principles of human development, organizational behavior, and the arts. They have been rigorously tested among business audiences and will unleash a degree of satisfaction at work (and in life) you may never have believed possible. For every one of us who works, The Artists' Way at Work reveals a completely new way to thrive.

Coaching the Artist Within: Advice for Writers, Actors, Visual Artists, and Musicians from America's Foremost Creativity Coach

Eric Maisel

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: New World Library Amazon Marketplace: 56 new & used starting at $0.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Creativity
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Creativity
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Personal Transformation

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

1000X better than "Art and Fear" 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Eric Maisel, San Francisco-based creativity coach and trainer of same, has delivered the excellent work Coaching the Artist Within. Unlike Art and Fear, Maisel's work feels more down to earth, less fluff-filled and is well-grounded by the author's experience as a licensed therapist and nationally certified counselor.

Coaching the Artist Within is presented in twelve segments referred to as "skill sets". Each has a specific purpose, being divided into information, examples and exercises. Perhaps it is the (former) teacher in me that appreciates Maisel's straightforward (but by no means flavorless) approach to mentoring over the Bayles and Orland spoonful of sugar oriented methods. The structure and resources in this book are impressive and intelligently presented. Specifically, I found that Maisel's ideas about dualistic thinking, which he identifies as separate from negative self-talk, insightful and relevant to my life and my study. Maisel defines dualistic thinking as a "either/or' mindset in which once a person has chosen their side of the coin a different reality becomes virtually impossible. His examples are easy to internalize:

"The moment I hear a client say that he favors process over product (or, more rarely, product over process) or that he favors simplicity over complexity (or, more rarely, complexity over simplicity), I suspect that he is in the habit of making excuses...and that he must be frequently creatively blocked. Just as one goal of an aware Taoist is to identify the principles of yin and yang and use their power to serve his ends so that in a given situation he manifests either more yin or more yang, the goal of a creative person is to honor both partners of every dualistic pair by choosing the quality he will manifest at different times." (Pgs. 56 - 57)

Maisel has chosen an apt delivery system to unmask this most insidious of self-traps. Dualistic thinking might be the most devious of all pitfalls the human psyche can create primarily because it is so unexpected. As he predicted I'd never given a moment of thought to the idea despite finding examples ever present in my daily life. Case in point:

"I'm not a concept person. I'm better at implementing somebody else's plan once it's been made."
"I've never been one for math. I prefer art, music and language oriented studies."
"Creativity is not my strong suit. I prefer more analytical pursuits."

Any accompanying contradiction in such thinking doesn't seem to eat into its effect. Dualistic thinking needn't make sense to survive; it works perfectly well in the absence of logic. Someone I know is fond of saying that the subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between right and wrong, it just records the most predominate messages and acts accordingly. If her theory is false there's no harm done. If it's true however...

Coaching the Artist Within is a primer for personal growth and creativity. Best of all no psychological subterfuge is employed in the delivery of its message; no Freudian-like analysis of the underbelly of its readers is necessary in order for them to put the concepts to good (and immediate) use. Maisel's writing expresses a respectful understanding of artistic anxiety without coddling or handholding, employing practicality and reverie in equal measure:

"Every creator is dreaming, but using the actual stuff of life, the formulas of chemistry, the lightness of feathers, the pliability of clay. Without a dream, the clay just sits there. Without the clay, the imagined jar holds no water...The dreamer rejects reality, the realist rejects the dream, the artist embraces both dream and reality...In your art and in your creative life, you uphold the dream and you respect reality. On a day that is too real, you remind yourself, `I have a dream!' On a day that is too idle, you remind yourself, `Get real!'...Since dreaming and reality-testing are both needed to fulfill your mission, both are moral imperatives." (Pgs. 177, 178)

If there is only one gift to be gleaned from Coaching the Artist Within it is this: Eric Maisel allows that creativity is a principle by which to live. By using the phrase "moral imperatives" he creates permission for artists to honor and feed their passions with legitimacy and gusto - supported from within by a strong framework of certainty that not to do so would be to starve a living thing, encouraging its death.

Editorial Review:

Coaching the Artist Within contains a dozen simple lessons. Eric Maisel, a leading creativity coach, writes each one with a novelist's flair, as a narrative complete with examples, exercises, and questions to help readers explore and reflect on underlying issues that may be keeping them from pursuing their urge to create. Topics include committing, planning and doing, generating mental energy, achieving a centered presence, becoming an anxiety expert, upholding your dream, and maintaining a creative life. Maisel has worked extensively with creative people - poets, filmmakers, novelists, dancers - and he revisits some of them in coaching sessions in San Francisco, Paris, London, and New York. Typical are the rock musician who wants to pursue a solo career and the screenwriter anxious to become a poet. Their examples both entertain and instruct, outlining how to discover one's personal muse - and the motivation to keep creating.

Writing Analytically with Readings

David Rosenwasser, Jill Stephen

Amazon Price: $62.05 List Price: $68.95 Usually ships in 7 to 11 days By: Wadsworth Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 52 new & used starting at $40.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Creativity
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Cognitive
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Creativity & Genius

Editorial Review:

WRITING ANALYTICALLY WITH READINGS is two books in one, a guide to writing with a reader, that teaches you how to have ideas and develop them in an academic setting and beyond. The writing guide offers a book-length treatment of analysis, a form of thinking and writing required in virtually all college courses. The writing guide is accompanied by a thematically-arranged collection of readings and images-material for students like you to write about and to use as models and lenses in doing your own writing about the world.

Idea Mapping: How to Access Your Hidden Brain Power, Learn Faster, Remember More, and Achieve Success in Business

Jamie Nast

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $12.48

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Business Life -> Motivation & Self-Improvement
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Popular Economics -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Popular Economics -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Praise for Idea Mapping


"Nast's work in Idea Mapping enables those with creative minds to clearly lay out their thinking process and those who are more process-minded to become creative. If your organization is looking for a pragmatic, step-by-step guide to idea mapping, this is it."
--Chris Brown, Executive Vice President, DTE Energy Resources

"I have used idea maps for thirty years and have taught MBA students, employees, and my children how to harness their power. I strongly recommend this book and believe you will feel it to be one of the best investments you have ever made in your own growth."
--Stephen C. Lundin, coauthor, FISH!

"This is a book that everyone should read. It's an interactive, thought-provoking book about the brain and learning that will expand your mind. Nast, an accomplished and well-respected instructor, has guided me into a new realm of learning experiences and possibilities. I'm sure you will feel the same upon reading her insightful work."
--Simon Tai, CEO, Buzan Centre Taiwan and S&J Media Intergration Co. Ltd., Host of News Discovery on NEWS 98 Taiwan

"Nast shows you a revolutionary method to capture your thinking processes. Don't underestimate the simplicity of idea mapping because therein lies its genius."
--Scott Hagwood, four-time USA Memory Champion, author, Memory Power

"The ability to visually capture and organize thoughts and ideas has enabled millions of people around the world to do their work with greater creativity and productivity, run their businesses more strategically, and manage complex projects more efficiently--even map out a sales process or new product roll-out. Nast's very practical, readable book will get you quickly up to speed on one of the simplest but most powerful ways to organize your ideas, your work, and yourself."
--Mike Jetter, cofounder and CTO, Mindjet Corporation, coauthor, The Cancer Code

"The principles Nast writes about in Idea Mapping have become a staple for me over the past fourteen years. I was turned onto the concept of idea mapping in 1992 and have been a student and practitioner ever since. This has absolutely transformed the way I learn, design learning, and prepare for public speaking. I have never been more confident in my recall, knowing the content is nicely tucked away in my brain as it was designed to be. Get ready for a life-changing experience for yourself and those you influence."
--Will Flora, Senior Manager, Chick-Fil-A University, Atlanta, GA

Life That Says Welcome, A: Simple Ways to Open Your Heart & Home to Others

Karen, Ehman

Amazon Price: $10.39 List Price: $12.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Revell Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $5.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Creativity
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Creativity
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Christian Living -> Women's Issues

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An excellent selection of tips, tricks, and techniques for receiving guests with warmth and spreading joy. 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Written by Hearts at Home speaker Karen Ehman, A Life That Says Welcome: Simple Ways to Open Your Heart & Home to Others is a practical introduction to the art of hospitality. Ad Ehrman explains, the secret of hospitality isn't primarily about how one's home is decorated or maintained, or what dishes are cooked; it's making one's guests feel welcome, and comes straight from the heart. Material matters are of course discussed as well, including the basics of battling clutter, dustballs and dirt; decorating on a shoestring budget; tips for hospitality on the road; and much more. As a devoted Christian, Ehman also shows how to open not only one's home to guests but also how to open one's life and soul as an avenue for God's love. An excellent selection of tips, tricks, and techniques for receiving guests with warmth and spreading joy.

Editorial Review:

The thought of hosting a dinner party or even having a friend over for coffee is enough to give some women flashbacks of lopsided cakes or doomed casseroles from home economics class. But opening up your home to others doesn't have to be fancy or frightening or cost a fortune, says Karen Ehman. In A Life That Says Welcome, she offers a practical, painless (no crafting or cooking aptitude required) course on hospitality. It helps busy women open up their hearts in order to open up their homes. Full of tips, ideas, recipes, to-dos, and how-tos, A Life That Says Welcome shows readers that opening up their homes is less scary and less work than they might think.

Creating Minds: An Anatomy Of Creativity Seen Through The Lives Of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Str

Howard Gardner

List Price: $30.00 By: Basic Books Amazon Marketplace: 55 new & used starting at $0.56

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Creativity

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Howard Gardner changed the way we think about intelligence. In his classic work Frames of Mind, he undermined the common notion that intelligence is a single capacity that every human being possesses to a greater or lesser extent. Now building on the framework he developed for understanding intelligence, Gardner gives us a path breaking view of creativity, along with riveting portraits of seven figures who each reinvented an area of human endeavor. Using as a point of departure his concept of seven “intelligences,” ranging from musical intelligence to the intelligence involved in understanding oneself, Gardner examines seven extraordinary individuals—Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, T.S. Eliot, Martha Graham, and Mahatma Gandhi—each an outstanding exemplar of one kind of intelligence. Understanding the nature of their disparate creative breakthroughs not only sheds light on their achievements but also helps to elucidate the “modern era”—the times that formed these creators and which they in turn helped to define. While focusing on the moment of each creator’s most significant breakthrough, Gardner discovers patterns crucial to our understanding of the creative process. Not surprisingly, Gardner believes that a single variety of creativity is a myth. But he supplies evidence that certain personality configurations and needs characterize creative individuals in our time, and that numerous commonalities color the ways in which ideas are conceived, articulated, and disseminated to the public. He notes, for example, that it almost invariably takes ten years to make the initial creative breakthrough and another ten years for subsequent breakthroughs. Creative people feature unusual combinations of intelligence and personality, and Gardner delineates the indispensable role of the circumstances in which an individual works and the crucial reactions of the surrounding group of informed peers. He finds that an essential element of the creative process is the support of caring individuals who believe in the revolutionary ideas of the creators. And he documents the fact that extraordinary creativity almost always carries with it extraordinary costs in human terms.

Uncommon Genius

Denise Shekerjian

List Price: $17.95 By: Viking Adult Amazon Marketplace: 25 new & used starting at $0.83

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Creativity
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Intelligence
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Creativity & Genius

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The How is in the Doing 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 25 people found this review helpful.

"How are creative people able to look at the same thing as everybody else but see something different?" Denise Shekerjian relying on interviews with forty MacArthur Foundation Fellowship winners tries to answer this in "Uncommon Genius." The Fellows, all having demonstrated creative genius across a variety of pursuits, provide a glimpse inside their own experience with the creative process.

"All were driven, remarkably resilient, adept at creating an environment that suited their needs, skilled at honoring their own peculiar talents instead of lusting after an illusion of self, capable of knowing when to follow their instincts, and above all, magnificent risk-takers, and unafraid to run ahead of the great popular tide."

This is a great read for both those who have already embraced their creative potential as well as for those who have not. Shekerjian surfaces the common threads of attitudes and behaviors that foster creativity. Creatives can use this book to build on the "why" of their creativity with confidence.

For those interested in developing their creative potential, the book eliminates the mystery and lays out the "how" of being creative. But to be successful, one needs to make an "act of faith" in the "act of doing." Shekerjian's "doing" includes:


1. Find your talent.
2. Commit to it and make it shine
3. Don't be afraid of risk. Or even failure, which if seen in its proper light, brings insight and opportunity.
4. Find courage by looking to something stronger and better than your puny vulnerable self.
5. No lusting after quick resolutions. Relax. Stay loose.
6. Get to know yourself; understand your needs and the specific conditions you favor.
7. Respect, too, your culture. We can't, any of us, escape the twenty-first century. It's tucked up around our collective chin as snugly and as firmly as the bedsheet.
8. Then, finally, break free from the seductive pull of book learning and research and the million other preparatory steps that could delay the entire span of a life and immerse yourself in the doing.

"Uncommon Genius' is written in an easy, engaging style. I had a difficult time putting the book down. And I will be unable to lend my copy out...as I have ruined it for others with my many notations, and highlights.

Editorial Review:

In the tradition of The Creative Process, here is an absorbing look at creativity sure to be a perennial seller. Everyone from the budding entrepreneur to the weekend writer is looking for a great idea. But where do they come from? Denise Shekerjian interviewed 40 winners of the coveted MacArthur Foundation Fellowships--the "genius awards"--to uncover how they work and how they sneak up on great ideas. And Denise demonstrates how individuals can harness the creative spark in their own lives.