Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Ghandi

This book examines the creative process by reviewing the lives of seven highly creative people. I enjoyed the seven mini-biographies, but the attempts to generalize from them seemed ponderous. Some of Dr. Gardner's generalizations seem overly broad, some don't seem to be universally true even among the seven individuals he studied, and in any case seven cases isn't enough to generalize from with much confidence.This book reminded me of Eric Erickson's biography of Gandhi, which I read years ago with great interest. Erickson's theories about the life cycle and how it applied to Gandhi's life were more satisfying to me than Gardner's generalizations.There is an excellent 1955 film (Le Mystere Picasso) that shows time-lapse photography of Picasso's work in progress. The film helped me to feel better about my own frequent revisions when writing. It is available on DVD from a French company, Cinestore.com.

Creating Minds has been a favorite of mine for years! I use it to motivate students to write their extended essays for the IB. Take any temporary group and use the same triangular framework (beginning, achievement, and results); it moves students to tell the story in their own words! My favorite tale is still the first student who took on the challenge; he selected sports commentators of a particular time span, explained their beginnings, their preparation, their relationships to get to the top, and their achievements. It worked!

Very innovative and brave on part of the author to pick up seven persons of fame and keen intelelct, from different stratas and walks of life, different countries and analyse each one's unique creativity and contributions in their own respective fields. Especially liked the chapters on Picasso, Stravinsky and Graham as it gives insight into their complex and complicated minds. This book is not only a great read for those who have interest in psychology as a subject but also for people who wish to expand their knowledge and increase their depth of understanding. Also the author has very subtly but poignantly revealed their human side, which beautifully describes the many agonies and pains behind 'genius' and 'success'.

fast delevery, book is in great shape!

I haven't finished reading this book however so far it was been a wonderful reading experience dense with the history and fundamentals of creative thinking. As the book serves almost as a focal point for different experts in the field of creativity, I had become distracted in the first few chapters and ordered flow by mihaly csikszentmihalyi which turned out to be another exceptional read.

A magnificent book by a magnificent man.Wildly informative across a 7 discipline range.Add it to your library. Use it in a class orfor a book-club or discussion group.It will prepare you for your own wider & deeper studiesof---Picassio, Stravinsky, T.S. Eliot, Ghandi, Freud,Einstein, Martha Graham. And open you to therange of possible forms of minding that are your own.F. Braio

This book focuses on the lives of many significant artists. It provides insight to their life experiences which helps clarify some of the idiosyncracies displayed by the artists. This collection of stories is well worth reading

Entraining and in-depth look at the lives of several creative geniuses. The author's main premise of different types of intelligence is well argumented.In my view the book's weakness is that the author uses a rigid and heavy structure to carry us through the lives of these geniuses.

Gardners provides a commentary on these seven exemplars that goes beyond earlier biographical representation of their creative genius

Enjoying this book at the moment, very fast delivery

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Great book...Quick delivery. Excellent price. Thankyou:)

a compilation of boring useless crap ! I gave the book away straight away , as it pulled my collection down