Creativity & Genius

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition

Amazon Best of the Month, December 2007: Legendary R&B icon Ray Charles claimed that he was "born with music inside me," and neurologist Oliver Sacks believes Ray may have been right. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain examines the extreme effects of music on the human brain and how lives can be utterly transformed by the simplest of harmonies. With clinical studies covering the tragic (individuals afflicted by an inability to connect with any melody) and triumphant (Alzheimer's patients who find order and comfort through music), Sacks provides an erudite look at the notion that humans are truly a "musical species." --Dave Callanan

Revised and Expanded

With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments.” Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds-for everything but music.

Illuminating, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable, Musicophilia is Oliver Sacks' latest masterpiece.

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity [10th Anniversary Edition]

With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity.

This book links creativity to spirituality by showing how to connect with the creative energies of the universe, and has, in the four years since its publication, spawned a remarkable number of support groups for artists dedicated to practicing the exercises it contains.

The Artist's Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist's life. Still as vital today-or perhaps even more so-than it was when it was first published one decade ago, it is a powerfully provocative and inspiring work. In a new introduction to the book, Julia Cameron reflects upon the impact of The Artist's Way and describes the work she has done during the last decade and the new insights into the creative process that she has gained. Updated and expanded, this anniversary edition reframes The Artist's Way for a new century.

Taking Flight: Inspiration And Techniques To Give Your Creative Spirit Wings

Stretch Your Wings • Learn to Soar • Take Flight

In Taking Flight, you’ll find overflowing inspiration—complete with a kindred spirit in author and mixed-media artist Kelly Rae Roberts. Join her on a fearless journey into the heart of creativity as you test your wings and learn to find the sacred in the ordinary, honor your memories, speak your truth and wrap yourself in the arms of community.

Along the way youÂ’ll be inspired by:

• Step-by-step techniques—learn the most-loved mixed-media methods of the author and seven talented contributing artists, and combine them in fresh and unexpected ways.
• Thought-provoking prompts and quotes—along with encouraging stories, insights and gentle guidance for finding your bliss, whatever your art or craft.
• Plenty of eye candy—pages and pages of the authorÂ’s endearing artwork, along with the varied works of the contributors.

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

DO YOU:

· dream about writing the Great American Novel?

· regret not finishing your paintings, poems, or screenplays?

· want to start a business or charity?

· wish you could start dieting or exercising today?

· hope to run a marathon someday?

If "yes," then you needÂ…THE WAR OF ART

Now, in this powerful, straight-from-the-hip examination of the internal obstacles to success, bestselling author Steven Pressfield shows readers how to identify, defeat, and unlock the inner barriers to creativity. THE WAR OF ART is an inspirational, funny, well-aimed kick in the pants guaranteed to galvanize every would-be artist, visionary, or entrepreneur.

Steven Pressfield enjoys great international success as a bestselling novelist. But in order to reach the top he had to do a lot of work to fight the inner demons that told him he couldnÂ’t make it. THE WAR OF ART is his challenge to creative block, and his succinct, straight-from-the-hip style will help every reader unleash their personal ambitions, be they literary, artistic, or business-minded.

According to Pressfield, the internal obstacle to success is Resistance. Resistance is the difference between the life you lead and the life you want to lead, and can take many forms. Pressfield shows readers how to identify and defeat Resistance at every turn and challenges them to change their amateurish, unsuccessful habits into a professional attitude that can get the job done. Finally, Sun Tzu for the soul!

Inspirational, funny, and a great kick in the pants, THE WAR OF ART is the perfect book for anybody who had a goal circumvented by life and circumstance: which is to say, you and everybody youÂ’ve ever met.

The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life

Art Therapy Sourcebook (Sourcebooks)

"The most accessible and complete art therapy book ever published. It is a great achievement."
--Shaun McNiff, author of Art Is Medicine and Trust the Process

"Malchiodi's fascinating book shows how modern art therapy is being employed as a potent health-care intervention."
--Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Prayer Is Good Medicine and Healing Words

Newly updated and revised, this authoritative guide shows you how to use art therapy to guide yourself and others on a special path of personal growth, insight, and transformation. Cathy A. Malchiodi, a leading expert in the field, gives you step-by-step instructions for stimulating creativity and interpreting the resulting art pieces. This encouraging and effective method can help you and others recover from pain and become whole again.

The Art Therapy Sourcebook will help you:

• Find relief from overwhelming emotions
• Recover from traumatic losses
• Reduce their stress levels
• Discover insights about yourself
• Experience personal growth

A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative

This is the 25th anniversary edition of the creativity classic by Dr. Roger von Oech.


Over the years, A WHACK ON THE SIDE OF THE HEAD has been praised by business people, educators, scientists, homemakers, artists, youth leaders, and many more. The book has been stimulating creativity in millions of readers, translated into eleven languages, and used in seminars around the world.

Now Roger von Oech's fully illustrated and updated volume is filled with even more provocative puzzles, anecdotes, exercises, metaphors, cartoons, questions, quotations, stories, and tips designed to systematically break through your mental blocks and unlock your mind for creative thinking. This new edition will attract an entire new generation of readers with updated and mind-stretching material.

Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation

Why do so many world-changing insights come from people with little or no related experience? Charles Darwin was a geologist when he proposed the theory of evolution. And it was an astronomer who finally explained what happened to the dinosaurs.

Frans JohanssonÂ’s The Medici Effect shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory, and offers examples how we can turn the ideas we discover into path-breaking innovations.

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. The author's objective is to offer an understanding of what leads to these moments, be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab, so that knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on 100 interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders, poets and artists, as well as his 30 years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the tortured genius is largely a myth. Most important, he clearly explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world.

Team Challenges: 170+ Group Activities to Build Cooperation, Communication, and Creativity