For too long, we’ve pretended that creativity is an impenetrable biological gift. As a result, we’ve clung to a series of myths about what creativity is and where it comes from. These myths aren’t just misleading—they also interfere with the imagination. That’s why, in addition to elegant experiments and important scientific studies, Imagine is filled with real life examples: Bob Dylan’s writing method and the drug habits of poets, an autistic surfer who invented a new surfing move, a website that solves seemingly impossible problems, and the offices of Pixar. Creativity shouldn’t seem like a process reserved for artists or inventors or other “creative types.” The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse hard-wired into its most essential programming code. This book is about how that happens. It is the story of how we imagine.

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2012: Combining cutting-edge neurological research with the age-old mystery of how and when inspiration strikes, Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine: How Creativity Works is a fun, engaging study of creativity. Lehrer uses case studies like 3M’s and Pixar’s innovative corporate cultures and Bob Dylan’s songwriting habits to frame scientific findings about the brain and where creativity comes from. You won’t find exercises to help you think more creatively or ways to avoid creative blocks in this book. Instead, you’ll learn how and why creativity is stimulated by certain activities—like looking at the color blue, traveling, or daydreaming productively—and how these activities stimulate creativity in everyone, not just in ‘creative’ people. Lehrer’s focus is as wide and fascinating as his topic itself and there’s something to engage every reader, no matter where you rate yourself on the creativity spectrum. --Malissa Kent

Amazon Exclusive: Jad Abumrad Reviews Imagine

Jad Abumrad is host and creator of the public radio hit Radiolab, now in its seventh season and reaching over a million people monthly. Abumrad has won numerous awards, including a National Headliner Award in Radio and an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Journalism Award. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of Imagine:

As a storyteller, I'm in awe of Jonah Lehrer.

It's rare that you read a book where every page has at least one "Aha!" moment, one moment per page that grabs your perspective and gives it a good shake. In other words, while reading this book, I kept experiencing the very phenomenon Jonah is investigating--the sensation of insight. That pleasant brain fever that overtakes you when you suddenly, in a flash, see the world in a new way.

This book is the single best attempt I've ever read (and I've read many) to demystify human creativity. To puncture the age-old mysteries: how do insights happen? How can I make them happen more?

The beauty here is in what Jonah chooses to notice. Bob Dylan, W.H. Auden, the inventor of the Post-It Note, an autistic surf champion . . . they all become gorgeously rendered wormholes into the inner wonders of the human mind. And because of his background in neuroscience, when Jonah does the brain, he delivers the goods.

And finally: though this isn't a self-help book (thank God for that), at the end of it, you're left with a set of ideas and practices that you can actually use.

I do believe this book will set a new standard for science journalism. I for one will be handing it out as a Christmas presents for years to come.