The Runaway Species
New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist David Eagleman teams up with composer Anthony Brandt in this powerful, wide-ranging exploration of human creativity. Together, they incisively explore how individuals, organizations, and educational institutions can benefit from fostering creativity, while celebrating humanity’s unique ability to remake the world.
The Runaway Species is a deep-dive into the creative mind, a celebration of the human spirit, and a vision of how we can improve our future by understanding and embracing our ability to innovate. Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman seek to answer the question: what lies at the heart of humanity’s ability―and drive―to create?
Our ability to remake our world is unique among all living things. But where does our creativity come from, how does it work, and how can we harness it to improve our lives, schools, businesses, and institutions?
Brandt and Eagleman examine hundreds of examples of human creativity through dramatic storytelling and stunning images. By drawing out what creative acts have in common, and viewing them through the lens of cutting-edge neuroscience, they uncover the essential elements of this critical human ability — and open the way to a more creative future.
- Reviews for The Runaway Species“A lively exploration of the software our brains run in search of the mother lode of invention… The Runaway Species is beautifully produced, illustrated and written. It sweeps the reader through examples from engineering, science, product design, music and the visual arts to trace the roots of creative thinking to three key mental skills: bending, breaking and blending.” – Nature — Read more reviews here. …
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- International Editions of The Runaway SpeciesThe Runaway Species is being published in many languages/countries. Some of the publishers and covers are listed here. …
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"David Eagleman is the kind of guy who really does make being a neuroscientist look like fun."
- New York Times
"What Eagleman seems to be calling for is a new Enlightenment."
- Sunday Herald
"[A] neuroscientist and polymath."
- Wall Street Journal
"Eagleman has a talent for testing the untestable, for taking seemingly sophomoric notions and using them to nail down the slippery stuff of consciousness."
- The New Yorker
"David Eagleman may be the best combination of scientist and fiction-writer alive."
- Stewart Brand
"A popularizer of impressive gusto...[Eagleman] aims, grandly, to do for the study of the mind what Copernicus did for the study of the stars."
- New York Observer
"David Eagleman offers startling lessons.... His method is to ask us to cast off our lazy commonplace assumptions.
- The Guardian
