How to Think Like Shakespeare

A lively and engaging guide to vital habits of mind that can help you think more deeply, write more effectively, and learn more joyfully How to Think like Shakespeare is a brilliantly fun exploration of the craft of thought-one that demonstrates what we`ve lost in education today, and how we might begin to recover it. In fourteen brief chapters that draw from Shakespeare`s world and works, and from other writers past and present, Scott Newstok distills enduring practices that can make learning more creative and pleasurable. Challenging a host of today`s questionable notions about education, Newstok shows how mental play emerges through work, creativity through imitation, autonomy through tradition, innovation through constraint, and freedom through discipline. It was these practices, and a conversation with the past-not a fruitless obsession with assessment-that nurtured a mind like Shakespeare`s. And while few of us can hope to approach the genius of the Bard, we can all learn from the exercises that shaped him. Written in a friendly, conversational tone and brimming with insights, How to Think like Shakespeare enacts the thrill of thinking on every page, reviving timeless-and timely-ways to stretch your mind and hone your words.