Handbook of Creativity

Rating:
Summary: Using The Left Brain Too Much To Understand Right Brain
Review: Although all the contributors of the book wrote about creativity, their writing and presentation styles are stiff, dry, and boring--- totally uncreative!

They used too much of their left brain to discuss a fascinating subject like creativity, which is supposed to be fun, lively, and thoughts provoking.

The only merit of this book is that it is a well-researched facts book on creativity, very suitable for the academic people. It focuses more on the WHY side of creativity, rather than on the HOW TO side, which makes it less practical and appealing to the creativity practitioners or end-users!

Still a good book to put on the bookshelf though.

Rating:
Summary: Not for getting informed but to understand the subject!
Review: Dr.Sternberg's book on the evolution process of creativity research is a splendit source for anybody who deals with social sciences, a must for organizational behaviorists and a very satisfactory piece of reading for general reader.

The book does not give mere descriptions on the scope of creativity but it provides great amount of knowledge on the evolutionary process of creativity research from ancient times up to today! Furthermore, the subject of creativity has been examined both from theoretical and methodological perspective in such a creative manner which gives a very good knowledge about the major approaches, the outcomes of the previous researchs, main obstacles in the course of investigation, and finally the probable studies for further research on the creativity.

Consequently, the reader finds a good chance not only to have a detailed theoretical and practical information on the subject but also to learn the main approaches of outstanding social scientists towards the subject and not mentioning about the meticoulisly prepared bibliography.

I am amazed with the intensity of Dr.Sternberg's study the language of which is clear enough those of us whose Mother tongue is not English (like me!).

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful design, good but not great execution
Review: I was looking for a comprehensive introduction to creativity research for students that combined a mapping function--showing what is out there by whom trending where--and a grounding interest function--showing how the research really does elucidate and give insight on insights, creation, etc.. Well..... The table of contents was perfect--absolutely perfect. But half of the articles served purely as mappings, with little or no insight provided. One does not know immediately whether to ascribe this to a fault in the articles included on in the research surveyed. Students who happened to get assigned good chapters came away excited, but those who happened to get assigned purely mapping chapters were bored by creativity research and hard to keep motivated. So now I have to use Sternberg's earlier book on Insight along with this Handbook. I apologize for the honesty of this review. It is a great mapping book and a moderate insight provider in sum.