How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education

is a brilliantly fun exploration of 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 chapters that draw from Shakespeare’s world and works, and from other writers past and present, Scott Newstok distills enduring practices that can make learning more creative and pleasurable. 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, enacts the thrill of thinking on every page, reviving timeless—and timely—ways to stretch your mind and hone your words.