books: nurturing talent : authors L - Z*...... .Talent Development Resources -..home page...site map

Creative Company : How St. Luke's Became "the Ad Agency to End All Ad Agencies" - by Andy Law "Passion. Rebellion. Guts. Glory. This book has the breathy pace of a thriller. The story of how St. Lukes takes on the advertising establishment is a merger of the ballad of Robin Hoods merry band and the story of David and Goliath. In fact, its a parable not just for the advertising business, but for all business today and tomorrow. St. Lukes is definitely on to something." -- Marty Cooke, Executive Creative Director, M&C Saatchi  "Andy Law is one of the few creative executives who has learned by doing, not just telling. So its exciting to have him chronicle all that learning for us. Having watched him build St. Lukes from the start, it feels like watching Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moons surface. He is truly pioneering how companies will have to be run in the twenty-first century." -- Geraldine B. Laybourne, Chairman and CEO, Oxygen Media

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The Creative Artist: A Fine Artist's Guide to Expanding Your Creativity and Achieving Your Artistic Potential - by Nita Leland [reader:] Nita Leland's book not only gives ideas to develop your understanding and appreciation of art, but quotes artists' thoughts about their art and even their difficulties in achieving what they were looking for.  She gives"tips" to release the creator in you, encourages hard and constant work as a way to loosen up and discover your skills beyond shape and color. She explains how after an accidental stain or assemblage of papers, fabrics and objects, you can get to artistic creation by emphasizing and developing the "accident" by means of color knowledge, tehnique and sensitive approach.

Gregg Levoy Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life

Denise Linn. Feng Shui for the Soul : How to Create a Harmonious Environment That Will Nurture and Sustain You

Grace Llewellyn. The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education
With the exception of a forwarding note to parents, this book is written entirely for teenagers, and the first 75 pages explain why school is a waste of time. Grace Llewellyn insists that people learn better when they are self-motivated and not confined by school walls. Instead of homeschooling, which connotes setting up a school at home, Llewellyn prefers "unschooling," a learning method with no structure or formal curriculum. There are tips here you won't hear from a school guidance counselor. Llewellyn urges kids to take a vacation--at least for a week--after quitting school to purge its influence. "Throw darts at a picture of your school" or "Make a bonfire of old worksheets," she advises. She spends an entire chapter on the gentle art of persuading parents that this is a good idea. Then she gets serious. Llewellyn urges teens to turn off the TV, get outside, and turn to their local libraries, museums, the Internet, and other resources for information. She devotes many chapters to books and suggestions for teaching yourself science, math, social sciences, English, foreign languages, and the arts. She also includes advice on jobs and getting into college, assuring teens that, contrary to what they've been told in school, they won't be flipping burgers for the rest of their days if they drop out. [Amazon.com review]

Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz. The Power of Full Engagement
[publisher:]  "At the heart of the program is the Corporate Athlete® Training System. It is grounded in twenty-five years of work with some of the world's greatest athletes to help them perform more effectively under brutal competitive pressures. Clients have included Jim Courier, Monica Seles, and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario in tennis; Mark O'Meara and Ernie Els in golf; Eric Lindros and Mike Richter in hockey; Nick Anderson and Grant Hill in basketball; and gold medalist Dan Jansen in speed skating. During the past decade, dozens of Fortune 500 companies have paid thousands of dollars to learn the Corporate Athlete training system. So have FBI swat teams, critical care physicians and nurses, salesmen, and stay-at-home moms. The Power of Full Engagement lays out the key training principles and provides a powerful, step-by-step program that will help you to: *Mobilize four key sources of energy; *Balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal: *Expand capacity in the same systematic way that elite athletes do: *Create highly specific, positive energy management rituals."

The Zen of Creativity : Cultivating Your Artistic Life by John Daido Loori "Naturalness, spontaneity, and playfulness are all aspects of the ordinary mind that catches a glimpse of the world of things just as they are," writes Loori, the founder and abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery, in the Catskill Mountains.  Loori, who was once a research scientist, had his first taste of what he describes during a weekend workshop decades ago with the great photographer Minor White. Thanks to the guidance of White, Loori's love of photography became a lens that allowed him to glimpse what it might mean to really awaken. ...  Through exercises, anecdotes and illustrations of his own work and the work of others, he illuminates how in Zen the seemingly different pursuits of awakening and creative expression are actually kindred, even twins. [Publishers Weekly]

 

Eric Maisel A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists

Eric Maisel. Fearless Creating : A Step-By-Step Guide to Starting and Completing Your Work of Art

Eric Maisel A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists
 

The Creativity Book: A Year's Worth of Inspiration and Guidance - by Eric Maisel Creativity is linked in our minds with poets, artists, inventors, and people of that sort. We think of the Edisons, Einsteins, Picassos and Beethovens of the world as creative. But any job can be done more creatively and any life can be lived more creatively. What's required are certain changes: that you begin to think of yourself as creative, that you use your imagination and your mind more, that you become freer but also more disciplined, that you approach the world with greater passion and curiosity. [from Introduction]

 

Evelyn McFarlane, James Saywell. How Far Will You Go? : Questions to Test Your Limits
[excerpt:]  "How large is your life? We are given so many opportunities to hear that question answered by others, famous people, people who do extraordinary things or to whom interesting things happen. Yet rarely do we ask it of ourselves, or even of the people we know well and love. But our so-called everyday lives are still full of remarkable experiences, challenges, and amazing or even courageous accomplishments, large and small. We wanted to write a book of questions to find out about them, to discover the edges of our lives, to ask about the outer and inner limits that we have already experienced, or have yet to find. What is the one thing you'd most like to change about the world? What do you want most right now? What are you most grateful for? What was the warmest welcome you ever received? What was the best thing about your youth? What was the worst?"

Jay McGraw. Life Strategies for Teens
[amazon.com review:] 'Are you as tired as I am of books constantly telling you the same old Brady Bunch, Beaver Cleaver, goody-two-shoes BS about doing your best to understand your parents, doing your homework, making curfew, getting a haircut, dropping that hemline, and blah blah blah?" So inquires Jay McGraw, son of bestselling author Phillip C. McGraw, in the introduction to the younger, hipper version of his father's Life Strategies. This funny, straightforward guide helps teens steer rather than drift in life, dealing honestly with topics from peer pressure to TV addiction with the underlying mantra, "Don't like it? Change it." ... McGraw urges teens to take control of their lives at every turn.'

The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women: A Portable Mentor - by Gail McMeekin [reader: Kathryn Hudson from Maryland:]  If you're at a creative impasse, this book will open your mind and free your soul. The wonderful and accessible stories about ordinary women who have found happiness by creating from the heart is inspirational.  These women are no different from you and I; they are mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, cousins and grandmothers who let the seeds of their imaginations turn into gardens of personal delight! You can take so much away from this book. I suspect you'll do as I did and start finding new and creative ways to express yourself. This book helps you find joy!

 
 

Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go by Shaun McNiff Experienced creators understand that a person's mental outlook has as much to do with the quality of expression as technical skill. The way we view situations is the basis for their creative transformation. When asked to define what is a work of art, Pablo Picasso was reported to have said, "What is not?"  [amazon.com summary]

 

Mari Messer. Pencil Dancing : New Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit
Mari Messer designs and facilitates workshops on creativity, writing and art. She is the author of several columns for a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal's National Business Employment Weekly.

Drusilla Modjeska. Stravinsky's Lunch

Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 -- by Charles Murray "At irregular times and in scattered settings, human beings have achieved great things... Human Accomplishment is about those great things, falling in the domains known as the arts and sciences, and the people who did them." [from the book] ------- Murray says, "The pursuit of excellence is as natural as the pursuit of happiness." For the creative geniuses who are the subject of his book, I prefer to say that achieved excellence simply is happiness. ...

Accomplishment "is fostered in a culture in which the most talented people believe that life has a purpose and that the function of life is to fulfill that purpose." Murray calls people who doubt or deny that life has a purpose "nihilists." Since accomplishment at the level Murray specifies requires enormous levels of work, nihilists are at a disadvantage. They lack a sense of vocation, either in the form of an idea that God has called them to a life of scientific or artistic endeavor, or, if they are not religious, in having a sense that they were put on earth to accomplish great things. .... A culture that "encourages the belief that individuals can act efficaciously as individuals" will be best in encouraging human accomplishment. Freedom for the individual and tolerance of nonconformity are positive contributors to a climate of achievement. > from review article Of human accomplishment by Denis Dutton, The New Criterion Vol. 22, No. 6, February 2004 > Charles Murray is also author of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

Kathleen Noble , PhD. Remarkable Women - Perspectives on Female Talent Development

Soul Sisters: The Five Sacred Qualities of a Woman's Soul by Pythia Peay [reader:] One passage [in the book] captured my attention: "Indeed, the gift of the women's liberation movement has been to show that the talents of women do not just shine in marriage and in child-raising, but in all spheres of life, from politics and sports to art, science, religion, journalism, medicine, and business. Thus, in the last decades of the twentieth century, women's wide ranging creativity has flourished as never before. This historic watershed has opened up endless vistas of possibility for women, allowing them an unprecedented opportunity to experience precious freedoms so long enjoyed by men." Pythia's words described the essence of who I was as a child born in the sixties.. a beneficiary of the women's liberation movement. She reminded me that my creative projects were a blessing despite the temporary appearance of any blocks.

Jan Phillips  Marry Your Muse : Making a Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity   [from book:] "Do not doubt that you are born to create. Do not believe for a minute that the realm of art belongs only to others...Find what brings you joy and go there. That is your place to create, to move with the spirit, for the Muse lingers near the home of our joy." "Jan Phillips is a co-founder of Syracuse Cultural Workers, publishers and distributors of socially-conscious artwork, and was the editor of their Women Artists Datebook In Praise of the Muse for three years. She has won awards for outstanding writing and photography.."

Talented Children and Adults: Their Development and Education  - by Jane Piirto [reader:] Piirto's writing is clear and understandable. Her text provides a comprehensive examination of not only the development of gifted and talented individuals, but also strategies for meeting these individuals' needs. One of the strengths of the book is Piirto's examination of stages of development encompassing birth to grade 2, elementary and middle school years, high school and college years, and adulthood.  Such an examination allows educators and parents alike a way to understand the complete developmental cycle of a gifted individual. In addition, Piirto provides information about appropriate curriculum practices, social-emotional counseling needs and identification of creativity.

Understanding Creativity  - by Jane Piirto, Ph.D. "I know of no textbook on creativity as comprehensive as this one."  Dean Keith Simonton - author of Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity With extensive scholarship, Dr. Piirto relates a fascinating overview of approaches to creativity, from the mystical to the pragmatic, the psychodynamic and psychometric to the cognitive. She notes that psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi makes a distinction of "Big C" creativity (eminent people making significant contributions to a domain), and "little c" creativity "by which human beings lead their everyday lives." She cites the work of social psychologist Dean Keith Simonton showing that "creativity is the work of a life... from birth to grave" and "a form of leadership... the creator is a persuader." For anyone wanting to enhance their creative lives and talents, the book provides a wealth of concrete and practical ideas from experts, such as divergent thinking exercises of the Odyssey of the Mind program, and strategies used by Dr. Piirto in her own classes. [Amazon.com reader review by Douglas Eby] > also see her book My Teeming Brain: Creativity in Creative Writers

The War of Art : Winning the Inner Creative Battle by Steven Pressfield To begin Book One, Pressfield labels the enemy of creativity Resistance, his all-encompassing term for what Freud called the Death Wish -- that destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a tough, long-term course of action that might do for us or others something that's actually good.  He then presents a rogue's gallery of the many manifestations of Resistance. You will recognize each and every one, for this force lives within us all-self-sabotage, self-deception, self-corruption. We writers know it as "block," a paralysis whose symptoms can bring on appalling behavior. Robert McKee -  from introduction - McKee is author of Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

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"This book was written for you if you have felt fear, anger, powerlessness, or despair about the state of the earth. It's for you if curiosity, intensity, guilt, and self-examination have been embedded in your personality since you were two years old. It's for you if you have had to injest massive amounts of jello or other dangerous substances to get through the day. ... "Ten Tips provides very specific strategies for personal development that are designed to provide the push you need to self-actualize, individuate, evolve (pick one), and help humanity get from hate to heart and from greed to grace. The assumption behind the tips is that when we do the challenging work of carefully examining and healing our psyche, we access our authentic, creative, nearly enlightened selves--our goddessness, if you will."  Paula Prober. Ten Tips for Women Who Want to Change the World Without Losing their Friends, Shirts, or Minds

 
Sally Reis, PhD. Work Left Undone: Choices and Compromises of Talented Women
   

The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up - by David Rensin If Charles Darwin were around today to test his theory of evolution, he could skip the Galapagos Islands and head right for a Hollywood talent agency mailroom, which for decades has been the ultimate boot camp for showbiz survival skills. ... The list of mailroom alumni includes media moguls David Geffen and Barry Diller, Universal Studios Chairman Ron Meyer, ex-Creative Artists Agency czar Mike Ovitz, managers Bernie Brillstein, Sandy Gallin, George Shapiro and Howard West... a host of today's top agents... and let's not forget legendary Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown...  "Mailroom" views Hollywood from the bottom up, with a big emphasis on the maxim that what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. It provides a glimpse of a rough-and-tumble world where young trainees learn that when it comes to pampering celebrities or placating your boss, no chore is too demeaning, whether it's returning a bra for Barbra Streisand or delivering a senior agent's stool sample to the doctor. Perhaps that's why the mailroom has spawned so many industry titans: It provides a bracing lesson in the acquisition and exercise of power. [from review by Patrick Goldstein, LA Times, February 18 2003]

 

Andrea Richards. Girl Director: Making Your Own Chick Flick
[publisher:] "Hey--are you the kind of girl who's ready to make your own movie? If so, you know all the fun is behind the camera, calling the shots, telling your own stories, and being in charge. Girl Director is the guide book for developing girl directors, with insights and advice from the greatest female directors in the business. Learn everything you need to know about low-to-no budget moviemaking.."

Trina Robbins. From Girls to Grrlz : A History of Women's Comics from Teens to Zines
[Amazon.com summary:] "This collection is in many ways an indispensable history of women in comics since the 1940s. Author Trina Robbins used to hang out in comics shops with her boyfriend, waiting impatiently, assuming that comics was essentially a boy's medium. Looking closer, Robbins realized there was a hidden history within the comics world, one that reflected
cultural shifts in ideas about women--if you look at how women are drawn, you learn a lot about how women are imagined. Robbins edited the first all-women comic book, It Ain't Me, Babe, and her insider knowledge is clearly encyclopedic."

Ken Robinson. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative

Michele and Robert Scott Root-Bernstein. Sparks of Genius
The Root-Bernsteins cogently attribute creative thinking to the work of the subconscious, those pre-logical glimmerings sensed amid the noise of formal thinking that intuitively synthesize an insight before it is translated into words, dance, music, math, pictures, whatever. This engagement of a whole cook's garden of subconscious ways of seeing, the Root-Bernsteins urge, is what we need to exercise. Here they demonstrate the transdisciplinary aspects of the creative process and give both examples of how they work in unusual minds, from Einstein.. to Helen Keller, and ways readers can go about bringing them up to speed in their own lives. Their 13 tools include exercises in polysensual imaging, analogizing (how is an electron like a vibrating string?), recognizing patterns as elegant as those of tectonic plate theory, moving from the abstract to the essence, and unleashing ferocious creativity through play. [from Kirkus Reviews]

Alice Ann Rowe, Ph.D.Where Have All the Smart Women Gone?

Sark. Succulent Wild Woman  /  Creative Companion: How to Free Your Creative Spirit

Tina Schwager and Michele Schuerger. Gutsy Girls: Young Women Who Dare

Jane B. Seaton. Artlife : Creative Practices for Making Your Everyday Life Sacred [audio]
[publisher:] Developed over a period of ten years in Seaton's acclaimed workshops... this program releases the fears
that hold you back from art making. Through gentle, hands-on, creative "journeys," Seaton provides simple instructions
for dozens of lively and challenging art activities.

Linda Seger. Web Thinking: Connecting, Not Competing, for Success
"In the film/TV industry in which I work, this book should be required reading for those who want to survive & thrive in "show biz".
You'll be surprised that much of what is written is what you may have instinctively known or "felt" all along... but Seger has
finally articulated it for you!" [reader review by Kathie Fong Yoneda]  >> related article: Web Thinking by Douglas Eby

Optimal Human Being : An Integrated Multi-Level Perspective - by Kennon M. Sheldon This comprehensive new book addresses two questions : how can individuals best integrate the different levels and facets of themselves to achieve "optimal human being", and how can researchers best integrate the different levels of analysis within the human sciences to understand "optimal human being" in general.  In the process, the book supplies two new frameworks -- one for viewing the human sciences as a group, and the other for viewing personality theory within that group.  Within these consilient frameworks organismic, cybernetic, and evolutionary theoretical perspectives are used to discuss the meaning and causes of optimal human functioning. ...  The final chapter proposes a comprehensive new profile of optimal human being. Intended for researchers and students interested in human potential in a variety of disciplines including social and personality, clinical, developmental, and industrial/organizational psychology and other social sciences, the book will also appeal to educated readers interested in personal change and self-improvement. [author summary]

Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity by Dean Keith Simonton [Book News, Inc.:]  Simonton (psychology, U. of California-Davis) argues that creativity can best be understood as a Darwinian process of variation and selection. Then he uses that construction to explore the sudden appearances of dazzling artists and scientists, the definition of genius, the conditions or personality traits that seem to produce exceptionally creative people, and the association between genius and madness.

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Eliezer Sobel. Wild Heart Dancing: A Personal One-Day Quest to Liberate the Artist and Lover Within
"Hip, wise, zany, and Zen, Eliezer is a delightful guide through the creative process and its healing power."
-Gabrielle Roth, author of "Sweat Your Prayers"
"Wild Heart Dancing is not merely a book to be read: rather, it is a one-day, self-guided creativity retreat, an experience which involves experiments in song, dance, writing and painting, as well as contemplative readings and the simple joy of quiet time plumbing the depths of one's essential Being." [author statement]

Handbook of Creativity  - by Robert J. Sternberg The book contains twenty-two chapters covering a wide range of issues and topics in the field of creativity, all written by distinguished leaders in the field.  The volume is divided into six parts. The introduction sets out the major themes and reviews the history of thinking about creativity. Subsequent parts deal with methods, origins, self and environment, special topics and conclusions.[Amazon.com summary]

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Bonnie St. John Deane, Jan Miller Succeeding Sane : Making Room for Joy in a Crazy World

W. Clement Stone. Believe and Achieve
"You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success - or are they holding you back?"

Betsy Dillard Stroud.  Painting from the Inside Out : XX Projects and Exercises to Free Your Creative Spirit

Rena Subotnik, PhD. Genius Revisited : High IQ Children Grown Up

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life - by Twyla Tharp "..impressively well-organized. Tharp draws not only on a lifetime of creative collaboration with luminaries such as Jerome Robbins, Richard Avedon and Mike Nichols, but also on extensive experience teaching "creativity" workshops at colleges around the country.  Eleven topical chapters, running from preparation for work through the uses of memory, generation of raw ideas, skill development, how to embrace failure and, finally, the arc of an oeuvre, contain and sandwich 31 practical exercises. Some take the form of questionnaires... others run more along the line of advice on restructuring one's life. She encourages the elimination of distractions such as newspapers, TV or, more radically, mirrors or speech, to read "archeologically" and to build a "validation team" of trusted and honest critical friends.  Does the method work? A good bet is that it will serve to inspire and kick-start those setting out on their path, regardless of age... from review by Kai Maristed, LA Times, Oct 15 2003

Brian Tracy. Maximum Achievement
"Get around the right people. Associate with positive, goal-oriented people who encourage and inspire you."
 

Releasing the Creative Spirit : Unleashing the Creativity in Your Life - by Dan Wakefield This passionate, personal guide draws on examples from the experiences of many creative people--Elaine Pagels (professor), Tom Wolfe (novelist), John Coltrane (jazz musician), Harold Kushner (rabbi), Danielle Levi-Alvares (yoga teacher), Stephen Hawking (physicist), and Phil Jackson (basketball coach), just to name a few--who each demonstrate one or more of the characteristics of someone who creates from the spirit. ... includes hands-on exercises... Dan Wakefield is a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. He has won a Rockefeller grant for creative writing and a National Endowment of the Arts Award. [Amazon.com review]

 
Sally Warner Making Room for Making Art : A Thoughtful and Practical Guide to Bringing the Pleasure of Artistic Expression Back into Your Life     "I know what it's like to abandon your art. After being disappointment by slim vocational possibilities as a young adult, I tried to forget I even knew art. I tried to be what others wanted me to be and do. I floundered for ten years, even went back to college later to pursue a bachelor's in a different area. But no matter how much I'd shove my artistic bent into the recesses of my mind, it came gurgling back with a vengeance almost as soon as I got my degree in engineering physics. I made the decision to be true to myself. While still not employed as an artist, I consider no longer have qualms about considering myself one."

Linda Wolf. Daughters of the Moon, Sisters of the Sun : Young Women & Mentors on the Transition to Womanhood
"This book tells about the lives of a group of teenage girls, their relationships, and the culture in which they live. It is about the courage it takes to face and change self-destructive thinking and behavior, to live with unanswered questions, to persevere against odds, to accept oneself, to tell the truth, to stay connected, to forgive, to say no, to change habits, to be passionate... It is about living in the web of life from the female perspective, about history and the women who have struggled for equality, opportunity, education and inclusion."

Suzanne Willis Zoglio, Ph.D. Create A Life That Tickles Your Soul : Finding Peace, Passion & Purpose
 

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