The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From (And How to Have More of Them)

In this insightful and life-affirming book, Albert Read puts the imagination back at the forefront of our lives as a “muscle” that is boundless in its potential, infinitely rewarding, and central to human achievement.

This beautifully written book explores one subject, imagination, through the lens of history and memoir, with some prescriptive aspects to it as well. The author posits that imagination, while elusive, is not just for artists and creatives, it is a muscle—an essential faculty of the mind to be trained and developed over a lifetime. Spanning prehistoric times through to the twenty-first century, from the earliest cave paintings to Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions to Steve Jobs’s approach to office design, it touches on art, music, film, literature, science, and entrepreneurship, to examine how the imagination has evolved—in shape, power, and pace—through the millennia.

Albert Read reveals how we can harness the imagination in our day-to-day lives and why, in the new age of technology, it is more pressing than ever that we do so. He explores where to find ideas, how to foster skills in observation and connection, and how to be more attentive to the fluxes of our own minds. After all, as Read expertly outlines, the imagination is our supreme gift, our biggest opportunity, our greatest source of fulfillment and our most vital asset for the future. The book is illustrated throughout with approximately 60 images.

Albert Read has launched and led businesses for Condé Nast in the UK and across Europe and Asia, overseeing titles such as British Vogue, GQ, Wired, Condé Nast Traveller, and Vanity Fair. A former journalist, he has written for The Spectator, The Telegraph, and the London Times. He studied classics at New College, Oxford, and has an MBA from INSEAD. He lives in London with his wife, the writer Catherine Ostler, and their three children.