A lively and upbeat overview of what creativity is and how it can be strengthened.
Hunter presents a how-to approach to fostering and encouraging creativity.
The author, a playwright, columnist, and longtime teacher of creative writing at the college level, presents in these pages a sweeping look at the history and nature of creativity itself, both as a neurological phenomenon and as a response to living in a complex world. Drawing on his extensive experience working with students of all kinds, Hunter outlines several approaches to conceiving and working with different kinds of imagination, backed throughout by the author’s efficient presentation of modern neurological science. “Paying conscious attention is how we think, how we learn, and how we observe,” he writes. “It is how the brain shapes the synaptic connection.” Whether discussing the mechanisms of paying attention, the vagaries of remembering things, or the effectiveness of brainstorming, Hunter uses a combination of anecdotes, quotations, and carefully chosen illustrations to reinforce his point that the human brain is in a constant state of imaginative activity. “We live in a river of experiences, sensations, thoughts, sounds, memories, and vision that roll through the brain from moment to moment,” he writes. These insights are fleshed out with examples taken from the lives and writings of some of history’s celebrated creative people, familiar figures like Einstein and da Vinci. The author also includes people from his own life, as when he recalls that his brother used to say any meeting that lasts longer than 30 minutes either has the wrong people or the wrong information.
The book is an inviting exercise in demystifying the most enigmatic elements of the creative process, and its greatest strengths are Hunter’s vivid prose and straightforward explanations. He calls procrastination “a form of metacognition that usually works to our detriment,” for instance, and advocates regular mental cleanses to aid creativity. “We all generate garbage – literal and figurative,” he writes. “Take your garbage out – write or paint it out of your mind.” He frequently mentions something called H-IQ, a teaching tool of his own invention that may help students to better understand and practice creativity, but the main elements of his text stand independent of any outside programs. The author’s insistence that creativity is a mental muscle that can be developed through steady work is energizing: “Imagination is a daily tool,” he insists. “We use imagination constantly, not just in playful moments of daydreams or wistful thinking.” The book brings a wealth of fresh and thought-provoking perspectives to the workings of the human mind, with reassuring reminders that those workings aren’t always clear. (“Sometimes, we are the last to know what our brains are thinking.”) A key aspect of Hunter’s project—firmly putting his readers in the driver’s seats of their own perceptions—becomes especially pointed in his discussion of robotics and AI (as when he argues that before we can “humanize” AI, we must further humanize ourselves by practicing tolerance, kindness, and compassion), but it’s present throughout the book.
A lively and upbeat overview of what creativity is and how it can be strengthened.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781737800712
Page Count: 296
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.
The 25th novel featuring Silva’s legendary protagonist.
During his intersecting careers as art restorer and Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon has tangled with Russian gangsters and al-Qaida terrorists. He has become well-acquainted with operatives in multiple security agencies and befriended a paid assassin. He has busted art thieves and created passable forgeries by Renaissance masters and abstract Modernists. This latest installment centers around his relationship with the pope and a newly discovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci that has gone missing from the Vatican. Silva’s novels tend to fall into two categories: books that reflect the politics of the day and books that don’t. His latest is one of the latter, which could be a treat for readers looking for escape, but it falls flat for a variety of reasons. Luxury has always been part of Gabriel Allon’s universe. It used to be an aspect of tradecraft, though. Allon would be wearing a very expensive suit and driving a very expensive car because he was posing as a client at a Swiss bank. Here, his wife is hosting a catered lunch for 150 of their daughter’s classmates in their apartment overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. What once felt like a scintillating peek into the world of the obscenely wealthy now just feels…kind of obscene. Similarly, Allon goes chasing after a missing painting as a civilian—he retired from Mossad in Portrait of an Unknown Woman (2022)—the same way another man his age might buy a speedboat or get hair plugs. As the story progresses, the stakes are raised, but it’s hard to forget that Allon is now a middle-aged man pursuing a dangerous hobby, rather than a spymaster leading his intrepid team to prevent a disaster that will disrupt the global order.
A rather flat entry in a generally excellent series.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780063384217
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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