How to Think like Shakespeare

Times Literary Supplement's Books of the Year 2020



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 Shakespeareoffers an enlightening and entertaining guide to 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, lively chapters that draw from Shakespeare's world and works, and from other writers past and present, Scott Newstok distills vital habits of mind that can help you think more deeply, write more effectively, and learn more joyfully, in school or beyond.

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 Shakespeareenacts the thrill of thinking on every page, reviving timeless - and timely - ways to stretch your mind and hone your words.