Rating: 
Summary: Best Overview of Similarities in Creative Lives
Review: Many have written about creativity, but few have considered creativity in the context of a cognitive model. Professor Gardner has added greatly to my understanding of what creative people's lives are like, by focusing on people from a variety of fields (from politics, to dance, to music, to physics, to poetry). A key lesson for me was that creativity can cause problems for the creative person. Having seen some of the bad habits outlined in this book, we can each see how we can become more creative and also avoid some of the pitfalls. Clearly, creativity can become an obsession, since it turns out to be so pleasurable to creative people. Creative people would clearly benefit from a series of questions that prompt them into considering the relevance and approriateness of their lives. I especially liked how Professor Gardner suggested what additional research should be done. I hope someone is working on these questions, now. I am a business person, and did not expect to learn much that would help in business. I was happily surprised to find that I did. An important lesson is that creative people need the right kind of emotional and social support in order to be most effective in not only creating more, but also in making their creations more useful for us all. I also recommend CREATIVITY IN CONTEXT and CORPORATE CREATIVITY, as good books for business people to read on the subject of creativity.
Rating:
Summary: A source of inspiration
Review: This book examines the creative process by reviewing the lives of seven highly creative people. I enjoyed the seven mini-biographies, but the attempts to generalize from them seemed ponderous. Some of Dr. Gardner's generalizations seem overly broad, some don't seem to be universally true even among the seven individuals he studied, and in any case seven cases isn't enough to generalize from with much confidence.This book reminded me of Eric Erickson's biography of Gandhi, which I read years ago with great interest. Erickson's theories about the life cycle and how it applied to Gandhi's life were more satisfying to me than Gardner's generalizations. There is an excellent 1955 film (Le Mystere Picasso) that shows time-lapse photography of Picasso's work in progress. The film helped me to feel better about my own frequent revisions when writing. It is available on DVD from a French company, Cinestore.com.
Rating: 
Summary: Creating Minds
Review: This book examines the creative process by reviewing the lives of seven highly creative people. I enjoyed the seven mini-biographies, but the attempts to generalize from them seemed ponderous. Some of Dr. Gardner's generalizations seem overly broad, some don't seem to be universally true even among the seven individuals he studied, and in any case seven cases isn't enough to generalize from with much confidence. This book reminded me of Eric Erickson's biography of Gandhi, which I read years ago with great interest. Erickson's theories about the life cycle and how it applied to Gandhi's life were more satisfying to me than Gardner's generalizations. There is an excellent 1955 film (Le Mystere Picasso) that shows time-lapse photography of Picasso's work in progress. The film helped me to feel better about my own frequent revisions when writing. It is available on DVD from a French company, Cinestore.com.
Rating:
Summary: One of My Favorite Books
Review: This is Howard Gardner's masterpiece. It is a fantastic journey into the hearts and minds of these seven geniuses. Each person covered is brought to life by the author in his analysis of their accomplishments. He wanted to know in a scientific type fashion - what made them special and how were they able to accomplish the success in their lives? Each of these geniuses also contributed to our world in a positive way, which makes the book more uplifting. All of Gardner's books are excellent, but his own creativity is the most apparent in CREATING MINDS.
Rating:
Summary: The "Creative Enterprise Writ Large"
Review: This is one of the most enjoyable as well as one of the most informative books I have read in recent years. I have long admired Gardner's work, especially his 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. Gardner sets for himself several specific objectives: • "First, I seek to enter into the worlds that each of the seven figures occupied during the period under investigation -- roughly speaking, the half century from 1885 to 1935." • "In so doing, I hope to illuminate the nature of their own particular, often peculiar, intellectual capacities, personality configurations, social arrangements, and creative agendas, struggles and accomplishments." • Also, "I seek conclusions about the nature of the Creative Enterprise writ large. I believe that if we can better understand the breakthroughs achieved by the individuals deliberately drawn from diverse domains, we should be able to tease out the principles that govern creative human activity, wherever it arises." • Finally, "I seek conclusions about the sparkling, if often troubled, handful of decades that I term 'the modern era'...Such a selection [of the seven during the half-century period] allows me to comment not only on [their] particular achievemnents...but also on the times that formed them, and that they in turn helped to define." Gardner achieves all of these objectives while somehow maintaining a delicate balance between respecting (indeed celebrating) individual genius and explaining the relevance (to each of the seven) of three relationships which are common to them all: the relationship between what he calls the "child" and the "master" throughout human development; the relationship between an individual and the work in which he or she is engaged; and finally, the relationship between the individual and other persons in his or her world. Of special interest to me is Gardner's acknowledgment that two themes emerged during the course of his research for this book which he had not anticipated when he began. Citing a "confidant" relationship with Fleiss from whom Freud received "sustenance" when he needed it most, Gardner gradually realized that a relationship of this kind, "far from being an isolated case," represents the "norm" among the other six. Besso played much the same role for Einstein, Braque for Picasso, the Diaghilev circle for Stravinsky, Pound for Eliot, Horst for Graham, and Anasyra Sarabhai for Gandhi. Gardner cites what he calls "the Faustian bargain" as the second theme which emerged unexpectedly during his research. This subject is much too complicated to be summarized in a review such as this. Suffice to note now that inorder to maintain their gifts and continue their work, the seven creators "went through behaviors or practices of a fundamentally superstitious, irrational, or compulsive nature," thereby sacrificing normal relationships with family members and friends. "The kind of bargain may vary, but the tenacity with which it is maintained seems consistent." I intend to keep these two themes in mind when I re-read this extraordinary book.
Rating:
Summary: Good read + some reservations on the general approach
Review: To me, it is of great interest in itself to read about the lives of these seven remarkable individuals. Gardner gives us an account of their lives looking through the window of his theories on creativity. While not 100% convincing in all that he proposes, sometimes resorting to seeing what he wants to see (rather than reporting what he sees), Creating Minds is a valuable attempt at identifying the nature of creativity. I think the book fails to provide a case for the argument that creativity is characterized by "a special amalgam of the childlike and the adultlike." As long as the following question goes unanswered it's only too tempting to rush to conclusions: Do creative individuals retain childlike qualities more than other people, and how exactly do they benefit from doing so? This question epitomizes my general unease with Gardner's study of creativity. If we only look at creative people, how can we understand in which ways and how they stand apart from 'normal people'? Finally, I am not so sure about the significance of that modern era talk.
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