Creating Minds is one of the most enjoyable as well as one of the most informative books I have ever read. Recently, I re-read it and recommend it even more enthusiastically now.

I have long admired Howard Gardner’s research on multiple intelligences which he discusses in other works such as Intelligence Reframed (2000), Frames of Mind (1993), and Multiple Intelligences (also 1993). As Gardner explains in the Preface, this volume” represents both a culmination and a beginning: a culmination in that it brings together my lifelong interests in the phenomena of creativity and the particulars of history; a beginning in that introduces a new approach to the study of human creative endeavors, one that draws on social-scientific as well as humanistic traditions.” Specifically, this “new approach” begins with the individual but then focuses both on the particular “domain,” or symbol system, in which an individual functions and on the group of individuals, or members of what Gardner calls the “field,” who judge the quality of the new work in the domain.

This is the approach he takes when analyzing the lives and achievements of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. Throughout the book, Gardner makes brilliant use of both exposition (e.g. analysis, comparison and contrast) and narration (especially when examining causal relationships of special significance) to reveal, explain, and evaluate each of the seven geniuses.

For example:

Sigmund Freud is emblematic – “a stunning demonstration that one may attain the heights of creativity through the use of a particular intelligence: through the intrapersonal examination of one’s own thoughts and feelings, and in his case, persistence even when no one else displays sympathy for or understanding of what one is doing. Freud then successfully redirected his energies and convinced an often hostile world of the plausibility of his discoveries. Proceeding from an initial fascination with the world, to the most isolated and hermetic of pursuits, and then back again to a conversation with multiple constituencies, Freud serves as a haunting reminder of the dual nature of creativity: a breakthrough within a particular domain that ultimately may speak as well to the interests and values of diverse human communities.”

Howard Gardner is the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi was first published by Basic Books in 1993 and later reprinted in 2011.