First serial sold to The Atlantic.

By examining a startling array of eminent duos—from John Lennon and Paul McCartney, to Pierre and Marie Curie, to the Wright Brothers—Joshua Wolf Shenk reveals the subtle, potent ways that collaboration works. In POWERS OF TWO, he offers a new vision not just of how people create together, but of the very nature of creativity itself, in the arts, science, business – virtually every human endeavor.

Shenk shows how creative pairs find each other, how they form a joint identity, and how they both drive and vex each other to brilliant, and sometimes explosive effect. Along the way, readers learn from social psychology, philosophy, and even neuroscience about what makes pairs tick. In the book’s mind-expanding conclusion, Shenk explains how the pair-based model of creativity even helps explain how people think creatively when alone—collaborating, in a sense, with the voice inside our heads.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

Journalist and essayist Joshua Wolf Shenk is the author of Lincoln’s Melancholy, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Lincoln Institute Prize. He is a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and other publications, and the director of the Arts in Mind series on creativity.

Rights
UK: John Murray
Taiwan: Locus
Holland: Contact
Italy: Mondadori
Korea: Sciencebooks

PRAISE FOR LINCOLN’S MELANCHOLY:

"This is sensitive history, with important implications for the present." — Publishers Weekly

"A significant contribution to the study of Lincoln and his battle with depression that will resonate with contemporary Americans. . .inspirational." — Kirkus Reviews, STARRED

"It contains some extremely beautiful prose and fine political rhetoric and leaves one feeling close to Lincoln, a considerable accomplishment." — Andrew Solomon, New York Magazine

"A fresh, fascinating, provocative pschohistory." — Sanford D. Horwitt, The San Francisco Chronicle

kontakt:

Piotr Wawrzeńczyk

piotr@literatura.com.pl