Sparks of Genius

Husband-and-wife team Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein—he's a physiology professor, she's a historian and creative writing teacher—collaborated on this study of the creative process. In an age characterized by an overabundance of information and over-specialization of knowledge, they say, we have to "rethink thinking." They describe thirteen tools, ranging from observing and imaging to empathizing and modeling, used by some of the most remarkable minds of our time. The Root-Bernsteins move seamlessly from explaining how poet and physician William Carlos Williams used empathy to understand and treat his patients to the dimensional thinking used by Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller and Wassily Kandinsky. Captivating for its insight into the potential of human imagination, Sparks of Genius will encourage readers to discover and unleash their own hidden creative instincts.