Imagine: How Creativity Works, Jonah Lehrer, 2012

A very readable, fascinating look at creativity through a scientific and cultural model. Lehrer presents cutting-edge neuroscience work on the two neural models of creativity—right brain focused daydreaming that leads one to make new connections between old memories, facts, etc., and the persistent, focused effort of the mid-brain, e.g. unconcealing via dopamine reward pathway via the prefrontal cortex. He then explores the borderline between mind and society—letting go and outside status which frees the mind to do new things. He finally moves on to the socio-cultural settings which promote creativity—urban crowding, supralinear growth, the power of Q, the social context (the Shakespeare paradox) of metaideas which encourage new thinking—benign neglect of censorship rules, loose concept of intellectual property, spread of education. Lehrer ends with a plea for some modern meta-ideas to encourage 21^st century creativity—encourage collisions of creative people, willingness to take risks, manage rewards of innovation.