It started with “why did she touch the wall in that spot?”. All I had to do was follow her to find out. His interlocutor Will Gompertz was a Director of the Tate Galleries and is now the Artistic Director of the Barbican. A household name from his time as the BBC’s first ever Arts Editor, he’s the internationally bestselling author of books distilling his insights from a lifetime of working with and learning from the world’s most creative people. Spanning pre-historic times through to the twenty-first century, The Imagination Muscle explores the genesis of ideas – from Thomas Edison’s serial embracing of failure to Jane Jacobs’ vision of how we should build cities together; from Steve Jobs’ approach to office design to the Japanese concept of Ma. Touching on art, music, film, literature, science and entrepreneurship, this book examines how the imagination has evolved – in shape, power and pace – through the millennia. Albert told Chris: “I think that's the lesson we all have to learn is we should all widen our perspectives, read things that we wouldn't necessarily normally read. Read differently, don't read one book and then another book. Read different books at the same time. So there are lots of ideas from history which I think need to be revived and brought to the fore.”

But the story did not go away. Not for me. Because Jacqueline Dwyer was the woman I was going to marry. I’ve often thought of the imagination as a muscle. With proper care and exercise, it gets stronger. Leave it alone, and it atrophies. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. For some, the imagination is a luxury in the modern age; something which is by turns elusive, difficult to employ and better left to others. But what is it to imagine exactly? How do we go about it, and why is it so important that we imagine for ourselves? Spanning pre-historic times through to the twenty-first century, The Imagination Muscle explores the genesis of ideas - from Thomas Edison's serial embracing of failure to Jane Jacobs' vision of how we should build cities together; from Steve Jobs' approach to office design to the Japanese concept of Ma. Touching on art, music, film, literature, science and entrepreneurship, this book examines how the imagination has evolved - in shape, power and pace - through the millennia.Brainstorming on any subject, I’ve discovered, will put my imagination on full alert and keep it there up to 30 minutes afterward. There are prompts on Twit-World. Most are depressingly turgid, but a challenging few stand out. I clipped the story from the newspaper and put it in my “idea box,” where I kept all sorts of clippings. Every now and then I’d look through the box to see what still interested me. This incident always did. Finally one day I asked myself, What if the woman in the car was my protagonist’s fiancé? I sat down and wrote an opening, in First Person POV, that ended with this: This would have been simply another dark and strange coincidence, the sort of thing that shows up for a two-minute report on the local news—with live remote from the scene—and maybe gets a follow-up the next day. Eventually the story would go away, fading from the city’s collective memory. Spanning pre-historic times through to the twenty-first century, Albert and Will will explore to explore the genesis of ideas – from Thomas Edison’s serial embracing of failure to Jane Jacobs’ vision of how we should build cities together; from Steve Jobs’ approach to office design to the Japanese concept of Ma. They’ll teach us how to discover where to find ideas, how to foster skill in observation and connection, and how to be more attentive to the fluxes of our own minds.

Spanning pre-historic times through to the twenty-first century, The Imagination Muscle explores the genesis of ideas – from Thomas Edison’s serial embracing of failure to Jane Jacobs’ vision of how we should build cities together; from Steve Jobs’ approach to office design to the Japanese concept of Ma. Touching on art, music, film, literature, science and entrepreneurship, this book examines how the imagination has evolved – in shape, power and pace – through the millennia. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?

Gift Guide 2023

You pass a billboard of a happy family—smiling dad and mom, two laughing kids—at a theme park. Happy to most people, maybe. But: Unfair as it may have been, my immediate thoughts were: a) he has always “dreamed of” being a writer, and thinks I can help him; b) he has written a novel and can I help him find an agent?; or c) he’d like to tell me about Herbalife. My What if muscle was flexing, and went to: What if this guy wanted to do something to me? Or to my family? And why? Beautiful, moving, profoundly imaginative in itself – this book is as entertaining as it is relevant and practical’ ALAIN DE BOTTON