The Creative Spark Audiobook By Agustín Fuentes cover art

The Creative Spark

How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional

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The Creative Spark

By: Agustín Fuentes
Narrated by: Agustín Fuentes
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About this listen

In the tradition of Jared Diamond's million-copy-selling classic Guns, Germs, and Steel, a bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth?

Creativity. It is the secret of what makes humans special, hiding in plain sight. Agustín Fuentes argues that your child's finger painting comes essentially from the same place as creativity in hunting and gathering millions of years ago and throughout history in making war and peace, in intimate relationships, in shaping the planet, in our communities, and in all of art, religion, and even science. It requires imagination and collaboration. Every poet has her muse; every engineer, an architect; every politician, a constituency. The manner of the collaborations varies widely, but successful collaboration is inseparable from imagination, and it brought us everything from knives and hot meals to iPhones and interstellar spacecraft.

Weaving fascinating stories of our ancient ancestors' creativity, Fuentes finds the patterns that match modern behavior in humans and animals. This key quality has propelled the evolutionary development of our bodies, minds, and cultures, both for good and for bad. It's not the drive to reproduce, nor competition for mates or resources or power, nor our propensity for caring for one another that has separated us out from all other creatures.

As Fuentes concludes, to make something lasting and useful today you need to understand the nature of your collaboration with others, what imagination can and can't accomplish, and, finally, just how completely our creativity is responsible for the world we live in. Agustín Fuentes' resounding multimillion-year perspective will inspire listeners - and spark all kinds of creativity.

©2017 Agustin Fuentes (P)2017 Penguin Audio
Anthropology Archaeology Civilization Psychology Social Sciences Paleontology Genetics Thought-Provoking

Critic reviews

"Persuasive, entertaining, informative... Fuentes has done a fine job of summarizing recent research in anthropology and primatology... pointing to numerous examples in which problems such as the finding of food, the avoidance of predators, the transfer of information and the manipulation of the physical environment are solved by way of imaginative collaboration.” (Wall Street Journal)

The Creative Spark is strong on man’s imaginative accomplishments and offers an important corrective to the skewed debate on human nature. A species that, uniquely, ponders its own exceptionality will surely be fascinated by it.” (The Economist)

What listeners say about The Creative Spark

Highly rated for:

Engaging Storytelling Insightful Perspectives Excellent Narration Thorough Investigation Optimistic Outlook
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