Twenty years ago Paul Johnson published Intellectuals, biographical essays forming what Kingsley Amis described as "a valuable and entertaining Rogues&#146; Gallery of Adventures of the Mind." It was a bestseller in many of the score of languages into which it was translated, but also criticized for describing clever people "so as to bring out their bad behavior" (Bernard Williams, New York Review of Books).</p>

Paul Johnson now meets the charge with this companion volume of essays on outstanding and prolific creative spirits. He looks at writers from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Mark Twain and T. S. Eliot, artists like Dürer, and architects such as Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc. He explains the different ways in which Jane Austen, Madame de Stael, and George Eliot struggled to make their voices heard in the masculine hubbub. Victor Hugo allows him to ask, "Can imaginative genius coexist with low intelligence?" Johann Sebastian Bach gives him the opportunity to focus on the role of genetics in creativity and to explore the strange world of the organ loft. Louis Comfort Tiffany takes him into the technology of glass-making and the tragic vagaries of aesthetic fashion. Some essays make illuminating comparisons: of Turner with his contemporary the Japanese master Hokusai, and of the two great dress designers, Balenciaga and Dior. The final essay examines those two inventive geniuses, Picasso and Disney, and asks which had the greater influence on the visual arts of the twentieth century -- and beyond.</p>

Paul Johnson believes that creation is a mysterious business that cannot be satisfactorily analyzed. But it can be illustrated in such a way as to bring out its salient characteristics. That is the purpose of this instructive and witty book.</p>

作者是美國知名的常民歷史學家,寫過無數暢銷的歷史書,代表作品《Intellectuals 所謂的知識分子》以詼諧趣味的筆調顛覆了傳統對「知識分子」的認知。( 中译版删去了关于马克思的那一章 )

這次作者將焦點放到了有史以來最富創意及創作精神的人物,從Jane Austen 珍．奧斯汀、英國詩人Geoffrey Chaucer 喬叟、Shakespeare 莎士比亞、Mark Twain 馬克吐溫、到畫家 Durer 杜勒、建築師 Pugin 普金,到 Picasso 畢卡索、 Disney 迪士尼、Bach 巴哈、裝飾藝術家 Tiffany,包括十三位名家、橫跨六個世紀,儘管本書不像《Intellectuals 所謂的知識分子》那樣充滿爭議,但是他也問出了一些犀利的問題：是否會有人充滿創意卻智商偏低？是否有天馬行空的想像力就可以省下十年寒窗？

作者本身也認為「創意」永遠是無法被完整分析的,只能在這些討論中突顯「創意」的特質,讓讀者重新思考創意的本質。