This is the second edition of Michalko's book - the first has been around since 1991
- but don't think that this makes Thinkertoys lack freshness. A good creativity book
gets better with age, rather than dating.
There are lots of good books on different aspects of creativity out in the world,
but there really aren't many that you can regard as a book to buy if you really want
to change the way you think to become generally more creative. We'd modestly say
that one of these is our own Imagination Engineering, and another is Michael Michalko's
Thinkertoys.
This book leads you into the fundamental challenge of creativity - tackling the assumptions
we make all the time, and that's an experience you will find repeated time and time
again. There are two important lessons. It takes a lot of practice to become aware
of making those assumptions - the reader gets caught out time and again - and there
are all sorts of different ways we make assumptions and fail to find new ways of
looking at a problem.
This is a polished book, neatly mixing exercises, information, techniques and more
with effortless ease. Sometimes there's so much on the page it can hit the eye rather
hard, forcing the reader to slow down and pull it apart - but that's not a bad thing.
