The Gift
How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World

I felt I needed to write a review to counter the negative ones here. Any book that calls the zeitgeist into question is bound to draw confusion and pushback. I've bought this book three times because I give it to friends who don't always give it back. That's okay: The Gift was and is a profound touc......more

I picked this up at a bookstore where I was killing some time before an appointment. I read the preface and the introduction and wept through them both. I left for my appointment, thinking I'd have to find a used copy of this book sometime and read it. A couple of hours later, I had to go back and b......more

I chose this edition because the new one looks like a Valentine's day card. I expected it to be perfumed inside. The Gift is a large and pretty messy book, to its credit, but the main thrusts are: 1) To use detailed analyses of folk-tales, anthropology, and economic theory to come up with a model fo......more

it turns out that every culture has a great creepy folktale about how, if you give up on your art or become ungenerous, you shrivel up and turn into a rotten fascist prune. this is one of the best books I've ever read and has changed my life, and is smart as hell, even though the cover has an embarra......more

This books gets me in the mood, creatively speaking, more reliably and more deeply than any other. Maybe I'm already primed by the time I pick it up, but still I highly recommend to artists and aspiring, cynical, doubtful creators that need a little help sometimes getting in the zone. This might hel......more