Frames of Mind

The Theory of Multiple Intelligences

By: Howard E. Gardner

Narrated by: Vanessa Johansson

“There’s a book I recommend for everybody: It’s Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind. It has helped me immensely.”–Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power

What do we mean when we call someone smart? That they are good at math and got a high score on the SAT? That they learn languages easily? Those traits might be what comes to mind first: they are what underly psychology’s classic definition of intelligence, and what we are told in school that a smart person can do. But they are not the whole story.

As Howard Gardner argues in the groundbreaking classic Frames of Mind, to limit our understanding of intelligence to “book smarts” misses much of what makes human beings amazing. Someone who plays an instrument well is exhibiting intelligence. So, too, someone who knows how to do physical comedy—is their mastery of their movements and the space around them not brilliant? And to have a profound knowledge of their own self, their relationships with others, and relationships between others, too, is to show great intelligence as well.

Gardner calls this the theory of multiple intelligences. But this isn’t just a book for intellectuals who want to argue about what intelligence is, or educators debating how to teach. It is for each of us. In an era of teaching to the test, and increasingly powerful artificial intelligence, Gardner’s work is a celebration of all the ways there are to be human.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2011 Howard E. Gardner (P)2024 Basic Books

Critic reviews

"The value of Frames of Mind is less in the answers it proposes than in the problems it poses. They are important problems, and time spent thinking about them will be time well spent."—The New York Times

"Timely, wide-reaching and in many ways brilliant....[Gardner's] effort to bring together the data of neurology, exceptionality development, and symbolic-cultural skills is not only heroic but it makes extremely evocative reading."—The New York Review of Books

"Mention Howard Gardner's name to a growing cadre of educators and the response verges on the reverence teenagers lavish on a rock star. The cult of Gardner began....with his book Frames of Mind."—Newsweek