That’s how Jonah Lehrer frames his wide-ranging romp through the world of creativity, touching down briefly on practitioners as diverse as Bob Dylan, the 3M Corporation, Broadway producers, Shakespeare, and Procter and Gamble. By examining the ways and means of the creative “geniuses” who produced “Blowin’ in the Wind,” the Post-It Note, West Side Story, Hamlet, the Swiffer (mop), and numerous other examples of successful innovations, Lehrer illuminates the principles he draws from extensive reading of scholarly research papers on neuroscience and his interviews with their authors and lays the groundwork for a set of observations about how a company or organization, or a government, can foster creativity. George Harrison: electric guitar on ‘I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die Mama I Don’t Wanna Die,’ ‘Gimme Some Truth,’ ‘Oh My Love,’ and ‘How Do You Sleep?;’ dobro on ‘Crippled Inside’ Collapsing the layers separating the neuron from the finished symphony, Imagine reveals the deep inventiveness of the human mind, and its essential role in our increasingly complex world. The best time to strengthen your visualization muscle right before you fall asleep. Your mind and body will be at ease, relaxed and ready to allow you access more visual imagery than during day time.

The short version: Lehrer draws together some interesting ideas, but I feel like his rhetorical flourish sometimes gets in the way of the point he's trying to make. His main point here is that creativity and innovation arises when we freely mingle within diverse ideas, but sometimes it seems like he's too busy boosting for entrepreneurs and big cities, and he lets that get in the way of his central thesis. (Side note: I waffled between 2-stars and 3-stars.)Creative Genius" being a phrase that I do not recall being called out (nor Initially Capitalized) explicitly in the text, but it was used rather prominently in Matthew Francis' review on Ars Technica, so I've decided to incorporate it similarly here.

For most of us, this is fantastic news. We don't have to win the genetic lottery to be Creative Geniuses. We're still at the mercy of other privileges ( e.g., we still need to be situated such that we can be exposed to diverse ideas; we still have to have the financial and emotional resources to withstand the failures that stand between our ideas and seeing them to fruition; we still need to live in a culture or society, and live under the aegis of a government that does not have draconian intellectual property laws and/or censorship laws and/or lots of other apparatuses set up for maintaining the status quo at all costs) but assuming all those other things line up, we may all be poised to become Creative Geniuses and change the world. Remastered for the first time in nearly fifty years, the original four speaker Spector/Lennon/Ono mix of the Imagine album in Quadrasonic sound. In short, Yoko courageously provides us with a gift that is exceptionally generous of spirit: we are allowed to witness John as a full and extraordinary human being. This version relies heavily on John’s repetitive piano riff (eventually covered over by the choir) with strong vocals from John and sax by Bobby Keys.Prime examples: When we heard John’s inhalation and exhalation before he sings ‘Imagine’, we teared up. Clearly a conveyance of deep convictions was about to take place. Jim Keltner: drums on ‘Crippled Inside,’ ‘Jealous Guy,’ and ‘I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die’ In the mid-80s I stepped out of the shower and wrote the basic structure Bette Ammon and I used for the handbooks and guides we wrote for teachers and librarians over the next 15 years. I met with a lawyer the next day and Beyond Basals, Inc. was launched. Since then I’ve been surprised over and over again when a really good idea seems to fall from the sky or when I’m suddenly aware of an art piece that took on its own life. Halfway to the final version (which was take 29) comes this beauty with Joey Molland and Tom Evans from Badfinger on acoustic guitars. All songs written by John Lennon except ‘Imagine’ and ‘Oh My Love’ written by John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Engaging phonics lessons and games help young learners connect English letters and their sounds to become independent readers. Despite this, though, there a fair amount of useful material in a book that is generally an easy read. It just isn't the masterpiece that it seems to think it is. John is directly in front of the listener, and the imperfections are chillingly perfect; the flaws flawless. John’s voice, which in the height of irony, he himself wasn’t fond of and often sought to mask with the abovementioned reverbs and delays, is both ferocious and painfully vulnerable, at times within the same composition.

I forgave Lehrer for basically recycling his own works. But then to find out he MADE STUFF UP in this book...not OK. So my four star rating is going down to a three for now. It might go lower if we learn that more than just the Bob Dylan quotes were fabrications. Joey Molland and Tom Evans: acoustic guitars on ‘Jealous Guy’ and ‘I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die Mama I Don’t Wanna Die’ Lennon later described working with Ono and Spector: "Phil doesn't arrange or anything like that—[Ono] and Phil will just sit in the other room and shout comments like, 'Why don't you try this sound' or 'You're not playing the piano too well'. I'll get the initial idea and we'll just find a sound from there."