This book was quite interesting and had good insights on the nature of creativity and how it shows up in different ways. It was not my favourite book on creativity because it was mostly collections of examples, but I did pick up a few things that I’ll keep with me.

If that were the extent of it I would have given it 3 stars, but there was a big issue with the book that lost it another star for me.

The book was presented as an examination of a trait common to all humanity, while its examples reflected almost exclusively men, who were mostly Western and white. There was even a section at the end about how gender and culture has historically been an impediment to being seen or heard in your creative work, yet the authors seemed not to have noticed that they had perpetuated that throughout their own book. I grew up reading books that omitted reference to women in ways like this and they shaped an internalised belief that women are not as creative or intelligent as men, a belief that is categorically not true and that I have had to intentionally dismantle as an adult. It was pretty horrible to read this book in 2018 still repeating the damaging errors of several decades ago, especially when the authors seemed to be mindful of the issue of gender in one part of the book.