Why read The Creative Spark?

Book cover of The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional

Book description

A bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth?

Creativity. It is the secret of what makes humans special, hiding in…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The Creative Spark as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andrea Flamini

Author

I love this book because it takes creativity seriously as a force of nature, not a personality trait.

I’ve grown tired of the way imagination gets romanticized on one side and dismissed on the other. Fuentes does neither. I love how he traces creativity through millions of years and lands on collaboration as its engine, a framing I now return to often in my research and in the studio.

From Andrea's list on The best books on being human in the age of AI.

Tom McLeish

Author

I love the way that Fuentes digs right back into human pre-history for clues to understand our extraordinary creative capacity as a species. From stone tools to warfare, religion, and innovative sex (yes, really!) he traces the ‘creative spark’ through the uniquely social and communicative demands on homo sapiens. The way he explains the vital part played by failure in all creativity is very helpful. And, of course, it’s refreshing and encouraging to read that science is one of the creative fields in his anthropology.

From Tom's list on The best books on creativity in science and art.