Creativity and Beyond: Culture, Values, and Change

For the past decade, creativity has been extolled as a virtue in education, business, and the media. Creativity and Beyond offers a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary tour of cultures past and present to examine the different ways people have conceived of "creativity" and how the common understanding of creativity is changing in the current flux of global culture. The book demonstrates linkages among disciplines and cultures through the use of many illuminating examples -- Egyptian pyramids, Chinese philosophy, Michelangelo, jazz, the United Nations, genetic engineering. Weiner analyzes the ways in which understanding creativity is tied to broader contemporary patterns, including intellectual concerns with postmodernism; trends in the arts; the changing status of women; the power of the electronic media; multiculturalism; developments in psychology, science, and technology; and the dramatic political, economic, and social transformations of our age.

Robert Paul Weiner is a writer, teacher, and consultant on multiculturalism and creativity.