3rd edition of Exploring the Nature of Creativity

3rd edition of Exploring the Nature of Creativity

Mike and Ronni Fox have just completed the 3rd edition of Exploring the Nature of Creativity published by Kendall-Hunt. It is on the bookshelves now.

We wrote this book to give the newcomer to creativity a view of the creative person, the creative process, the creative outcome (product) and the creative press. In 1999 we could find no text that covered all four P’s. Most of what we found spoke to the creative person, or the processes, or the press, but nothing looked at the whole schema – so we wrote one. We used the working title “First You take a P” and later decided that didn’t sound scholarly enough. (The first edition was published in 2000. The second edition came out in 2004.)

Ronni was involved in this effort from the start. Here is the back story….
Shortly after we were married, I asked Ronni if she ever had insomnia. She said, “Yes, once in a while.” So I asked her what she did for it. Ronni said, “I just read a chapter out of one of your books!” She did follow that up with a comment about my work being information dense.
To counteract my information–dense writing style (Ronni’s words, not mine), we decided, from the start, to write Exploring together. She is a real writer – published – and paid! We decided to make it a teach-by-parable book. That notion has worked out nicely. The first edition was well crafted, except for 147 typos and incomplete sentences. Where is an editor when you need one? The second edition was supposed to fix that sort of thing. And it did – except for the new ones!

The third edition is genuinely different. E. Paul Torrance is in there now – thanks to Alan Black who was kind enough to point out the omission! A blinding flash of the obvious if ever there was one. The evolution of the CPS model shows early Osborn through the new Thinking Skills Model. The press chapter is clearer with little duplication of concepts. The focus is on simplicity. After all, it is an introductory text.

The royalties from the book are donated directly to the International Center for Studies in Creativity. The illustrations, cover design, and page layout were donated by folks involved in creativity. The illustrations were created by Alan Cowert. He does graphic facilitations, among other things. Allen lives in Alabama and works nationally. If you like his work, he can be reached at akc900@aol.com . The cover design was created by Jessica Hulbert. Jessica minored in creativity and is now a media specialist for a law firm in Getzville, NY. The page layout came from Nick Strascina. He minored in creativity and majored in graphic design. I haven’t heard from him lately, but I think he has his own graphic design business.

For about $60, Exploring the Nature of Creativity is a really good introductory book. I know. I wrote it – and Ronni fixed it!