Handbook of creativity /

Creativity is a fascinating subject, but how to study it? In this handbook, Sternberg (Yale) presents an array of approaches and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses. His volume serves well as a handbook, containing chapters that are appropriately thorough and self-contained. The contributors are experts on, and in many cases originators of, the theories and topics they discuss. Sternberg's volume has more panache than the broader, more detailed work it supplements, Creativity Research Handbook, ed. by Mark Runco (1997- ). For example, humor--a topic some consider to be important to creativity (as set forth by Arthur Koestler in The Act of Creation, CH. Jun'65)--is hardly mentioned in Sternberg but is treated in Runco's volume and elsewhere (e.g., The Sense of Humor: Explorations of a Personality Characteristic , ed. by Willibald Ruch, 1998). Those looking for an introduction to the subject should look elsewhere, given the considerable overlap among the chapters. A better start might be Hans Eysenck's Genius: The Natural History of Creativity (CH, Mar'96), frequently cited in the present volume, or David Gelernter's The Muse in the Machine: Computerizing the Poetry of Human Thought (CH, Nov'94), not mentioned at all in Sternberg's collection. Still, Sternberg has put together an original, useful book that will be valuable in upper-division undergraduate collections and above. P. L. Derks College of William and Mary