Adam Grant at the New York Times:
David Byrne, the prizewinning musician and a co-founder of Talking Heads, reads esoteric academic journal articles for fun — and uses them to delight and enlighten us.
In his new book, “Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up,” Byrne draws on his reading to deliver profound insights about creativity. Throughout our history of information scarcity, the currency of progress was discovery. Now, in the age of information abundance, inspiration and innovation may depend more on rediscovery.
Byrne guides us on a captivating quest to understand how we come to remember forgotten ideas, inventions and technologies. With striking dexterity and range, he explores how advocates reawakened Bach’s compositions and Vermeer’s paintings after one and two centuries of slumber; how technological advances rekindled theories of continental drift and black holes; how accidents resuscitated hand-washing and genetics; and how war renewed interest in the submarine and “The Great Gatsby.”
More here.
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