Customer Reviews

Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People

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It is such a pleasure to write a review of a book of this caliber. I don't have to balance what is good with what is not so good, because "Sparks of Genius" is an excellent, superb book, from start to finish. I would have only one small addition to one of the chapters, which I will mention below.

I think that "Sparks of Genius" is the first book I have ever read on the subject of how to develop genius, but I cannot imagine a better complilation of what it takes to foster and inspire genius and creativity in people. The main reason for this is that the authors base their material on how creative people in the arts, sciences, etc., acquire and develop their skills, and every chapter except the last one (appropriately) are full of firsthand examples from people of genius and creativity in (almost!) all walks of life. Yet the authors themselves exhibit their own kind of genius in organizing the material, writing chapter after chapter with genuine vision and clarity, and most importantly, after intellectually explaining "sparks" such as observing, imaging, analyzing, and empathizing, give specific, generally uncomplicated, exercises on how to develop these skills.

Throughout the book the authors demonstrate that people in very diverse walks of life exhibit the same "sparks of genius" in their work, which I find quite inspiring in itself. In this way they themselves exemplify the value of "synthesis," perhaps the key that links all the methods they depict.

The book is a call to "rethink thinking," to teach cross-discipline learning, and I feel that the methods discussed in the book, and then discussed specifically in the context of education in the final chapter, would be invaluable as educational tools. I believe that if children's education could be fostered along the lines of these tools of creative genius, if children could be taught to use their own internal resources instead of relying on the obvious external garbage such as TV and video games, the improvement to society would be tremendous.

My favorite chapter in the book is called "Empathizing," where the authors discuss what artists and scientists do to go inside of whomever or whatever they are portraying (actors), drawing (artists), treating (physicians), as well as other real-life examples.

My only small addition to "Sparks of Genius" would be in the penultimate chapter, called "Synthesizing," some mention of the "gestalt" in experiencing the whole in music, art, etc. I liked this term from personal experience and from books on gestalt therapy that came out some time ago, and it's a very intuitive concept that fits in well with the chapter's discussion.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough!

The authors cite the above quote as synthesizing the lessons of this remarkable book. In so doing, they make a compelling case for a reversal of the education and thinking processes of ever more separating the arts and sciences, the senses, and subdividing specialities. As the authors relate in a number of ways, a central problem of education today is that the students often can pass the tests but not apply what they learned to everyday life. This is a core problem also cited by fellow MacArthur scholar Howard Gardner in The Unschooled Mind. They see the compartmentalization of knowledge and learning as the cause.

The path taken to get to that conclusion is a most unique and pleasant one to follow. They investigated the writings of creative geniuses and the reports of contemporaries about them, and found that these people employed many more kinds of thought processes than the average person uses. And each thought process added something to the whole.

In so doing, they correct many descriptions about these same people in popular (and even scholarly) writings. For example, almost everyone knows that Einstein had trouble with math as a young person. Most people believe that he suddenly blossomed as a mathematician later. But that's not the case. He developed his concepts through mind and body experiments that had nothing to do with math. When it came time to create the proofs for his work, he needed help from accomplished mathematicians.

This is another key point: the creative insight that these people have is never as it is presented to the world. That communicated version is simply one that is easier to understand, but has little to do with the way the innovator perceives the concept. As the authors put it, "Creative thinking in all fields occurs proverbally, before logic or linguistics comes into play, manifesting itself through emotions, intuitions, images and bodily feelings. The resulting ideas can be translated into one or more formal systems of communication . . . only after they are sufficiently developed in their prelogical forms."

To make the case for that perspective, the authors take creative thinking in both arts and sciences and look at the process as one to find commonalities. In so doing, they observe 13 frequently used methods by creative geniuses: observing; imaging; abstracting; recognizing patterns; analogizing; body thinking; empathizing; dimensional thinking; modeling; playing; transforming; and synthesizing.

With many books, you can read a list like that and skip the book. That would be a mistake here. Each of these 13 chapters was a revelation to me with how much can be done in each area. Drawing from a number of fields and individuals, the authors describe advanced uses of these techniques in ways beyond what I could have imagined.

Having heard the concept for the first time in a particular application, I could usually begin to apply it to my own issues. In other words, this book was teaching me to think at a fundamental level that I had never understood before! Then, each chapter has examples and exercises to stimulate you further. Being a messy sort of person, I liked the ones about playing in the mud and keeping old samples around quite a lot.

Also, in each chapter you will find statistics on the prevalence of the methods in ordinary use. Some are virtually universal (such as observing) while others are quite unusual in adults (like advanced forms of synthesizing). Yet almost all of these are quite common in children and in key cultural events (like the Japanese tea ceremony). That seems to imply that education is partly the process of unlearning some important creative skills.

I had personally always been fascinated by Einstein's mind game of imagining that he was riding on a photon of light, carrying a flashlight, and wondering what would happen when he pointed it at another photon traveling next to him. Would it flow back or what? Now that I have read this book, I am enriched by 200 more such examples of creative thinking. This is a book I will treasure forever.

But before you retire into a round of ever greater stimulation and creativity, take a moment and share this book with an educator. This message is of critical importance for the future. Creative geniuses are succeeding almost solely by trusting their instincts. We can do much more to nurture creativity by sharing and applying these lessons to all learning environments. In so doing, we can extend the current best practice to a much more effective level, and accelerate the process of unraveling the important lessons still to be learned.

Abolish your disbelief about the untapped creative potential of all people with this book!

Enjoy!

The review by Kirkus Associates is excellent, and many of the other reviews are very good. The 13 thinking tools of the world's most creative people, according to the authors, are abstracting, analogizing, body thinking (body images), dimensional thinking, empathizing (feeling empathy with objects, processes, others), forming patterns, imaging (thinking of things by using mental images of them, whether realistic or "distorted"), modeling, observing, playing, recognizing patterns, synthesizing (combining, etc.), transforming. The study of genius as an "extreme" of knowledge discovery is long past its due in education from elementary through university, and has many clues for improving education. Geniuses not only cross fields from science through art, but tend to be interdisciplinary, appear to be well grounded both in basics and intuition/thinking/mental processes, and use imagery (by the way, using imagery is taught by a number of cognitive psychologists and psychoanalysts for mental health as well). Robert Bernstein's physiology background helps him unlock some of the physiological processes of genius, and Michele's historical background helps trace back the characteristics of pre-modern geniuses. There is probably much more to the story, but this book is an excellent start.

I like Simonton's book on the origins of genius and the Sternberg handbook on creativity. I keep wondering why they do not cite this work and vice versa. Other reviewers have listed the 13 types of thought presented. So, we have a chapter on a type of thought--what do we put in the chapter about the type of thought? It turns out we put lots and lots of examples of that type of thought being done by creative people of various sorts--scientists, artists, social leaders, and a few others. So we get a name of a type of thought and a paragraph explaining what it is followed by zillions of examples. This would in my mind make a nice 20 page book. At 200plus pages it is a bit of a windbag book. The earlier Root-Bernstein book, Discovery, was much more densely written with good ideas on every one or two pages. That was a really good deal--this follow up is a bit, frothy for my taste. I like meat!

Sparks of Genius is an excellent analysis of the variety of different types of "tools" or techniques that innovators and creators use. I agree with many of the other reviewers that the authors provide copious examples. For some, this was overdoing it, but for myself, the examples were well selected and properly used to illustrate the tools at issue. I never felt bored or annoyed by them.

Unlike some reviewers, I felt that the authors did provide a solid theoretical or conceptual framework, and not merely a laundry list of examples. Indeed, I was particularly impressed by their identification and explanation of the reasons behind the deep linkages between artistic and scientific endeavors, and by the interesting explorations of the interplay of artistic and scientific discovery in many noted thinkers. Science education in general would be much more interesting to the average student if standard textbooks fleshed out the often artistic interests of the great scientists as well as the Root-Bernsteins.

I would take the Root-Bernsteins to task however, for the rather prosaic presentation of their material. In particular, its a shame for them to so heavily emaphasize visualization and multimodal representation, and to cite the work of Edward Tufte, and then present such a conventionally design book of text and relatively limited and often poorly placed figures, oddly located "appendices" etc. The illustrations, layouot, typesetting, and overall design should have itself been reflective of their subject matter. Perhaps a second edition would rectify this oversight.

Finally, I note that they could have better "rationalized" or categorized the various "tools" they identify, and thereby perhaps shortened the book. For example, Body Thinking is really just another type of Imagining, that is imaging with the body. These captures could have been combined.

Overall, an excellent, enjoyable read. Most non-fiction works like this take me weeks to read. This one I literally could not put down. Recommended.

I have checked this book out of the library so many times that it was time to own it. Each chapter on thinking skills deserves a slow, relaxed read. The authors are to be commended for such easy to read text and depth of topic. The understanding of early development of these skills and the suggestions for application of the lessons are teriffic. This book is a personal library must-have.

This is a special book. The authors categorize different modalities of creative activities into 13 different components, and then discuss them in detail, in the format of listing dozens and dozens of quotations from the creative people in the arts and the sciences. The large amount of quotations, subsumed under different categories, is the valuable service done by the authors. How to extract from those gems of quotations something whose significance goes beyond the categorial subsumption is something the authors do not do much. So, it is quite typical that taking away the quotations and descriptions from a chapter, you may often find only one or two pages (sometimes even one or two passages) really contributed by the authors as their interpretations and elaborations of the underlying signficance of the modalities. For the readers who want ready-made guidelines on creative thinking, they might be a little disappointed. But for those who enjoy digesting the insights by themselves and form their own interpretative constructions, this book is a good one.

For anyone interesting in understand or developing his own mind and the creative process, this is a superb book marred only by the mediocre printing of what are appropriately selected illustrations. That, however, is a fault of the publisher, not the authors. Not only is the easy style and sheer erudition of the authors impressive but even more impressive is the creative manner is which creativity is illustrated and discussed. A truly superb book. Highly recommended

"Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People", by Robert & Michele Root-Bernstein. Mariner Books, MA 1999. ISBN 0-618-12745-3 Pbk. 327/401 pages that includes 13 pgs. notes; 20 pgs. Bibliog.; 8 pgs. Misc.; and 22 pgs. index plus a few B & W photos & Illus. 9" x 6".

An intriguing assemblage of anecdotal stories about important and/or distinguished, talented scholars, scientists, teachers, inventors, and divers artists (dance, music, creative arts) that explore the subject of creativity: - & written by a pair of dedicated writers with notable published works along similar substance.

An alternative title could be "Creative Thinking" - this book explores the intrinsic substantive milieu out of which may arise sparks of genius, the "eureka", the intuitive ratiocination or day-dreaming flash of insight giving rise to novel, potent revelations about Man's ostensibly unlimited potential for imagination of previously hidden `secrets' or understandings -- ranging from mathematical, artistic, or mechanical concepts or models, etc. Underlying tools are diverse, but include observing, imaging, abstracting, pattern formation & recognition, analogizing, empathizing, dimensional and body thinking, play, modeling, transforming, and synthesizing.

At best, these thinking tools as expounded by the authors are best wonted or encouraged at early ages when exploration, creativity, play and toys are encountered in the nurturing process -- thusly parents, mentors and teaching institutions are administrators of this important charge. The thrust is not so much toward "knowing" as it is toward "understanding".

13 methods of creativity. Each given a brief intro and then, yes, into examples. But unless you feel you intuitively know what 'abstracting' is then I can only see that the examples add much needed depth to what would otherwise be a pretty flimsy coverage.
This is not the kind of book that has 'creativity tools' as such (eg., Michalko) But this is more aligned with the thought processes in general that lead to the flow of creative thought. I found the first 4-5 of particular interest but must admit that by the second half of the book some of the ideas and thought skills were a little obvious.
3.5 stars