The Mind's Best Work - Softcover

Perkins, D. N.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674576241 ISBN 13: 9780674576247

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1981

Synopsis

Over the years, tales about the creative process have flourished-tales of sudden insight and superior intelligence and personal eccentricity. Coleridge claimed that he wrote "Kubla Khan" in one sitting after an opium-induced dream. Poe declared that his "Raven" was worked out "with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem."

D. N. Perkins discusses the creative episodes of Beethoven, Mozart, Picasso, and others in this exploration of the creative process in the arts, sciences, and everyday life.

About this title

About the Author:

D.N. Perkins is Director of Harvard Project Zero, Senior Research Associate, and Lecturer On Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Review:

A delightful book, easy to read, amusing and jammed with intriguing "personal experiments," puzzles for the reader that offer insights into creative thinking. It is a valuable book because it summarizes well the results of recent investigations and effectively debunks a variety of cherished myths... Read the book for fun. Read it to find out what psychologists are up to. (New York Times Book Review)

The Mind's Best Work [is] a guided tour of the new psychology of creative thinking... Perkins belongs in that rare company of Lewis Thomas and other popularizers of science who combine a lively style, playful wit and discriminating scholarship. (Newsday)

A survey of scientific research that's also a work of playful wit. (Newsweek)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0674576241
• ISBN 13: 9780674576247
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 324