How to Steal Fire

Random House presents the audiobook edition of How to Steal Fire, written and read by Stephen Bayley and Roger Mavity.

Creativity is a fundamental challenge that everyone faces in the modern world, be they in business, in education or a struggling artist or musician. Indeed it touches all our lives in hundreds of different ways, from the clothes we buy to the buildings we live in. But this book is not about how to knit an exciting jumper, it's about individuals reclaiming themselves from the anonymous dreariness of a data-driven, collectivised, faceless culture.

It's a human compulsion to be creative, to do and make new things. Without it, we'd still be mired in protoerozoic slime. Maurice Saatchi once said that creativity is the last legal way of getting an unfair advantage in business. But if creativity is legal, it is not always moral or ethical. In a signature act of creativity, Prometheus stole fire from the gods.

In The School of Genius, psychiatrist Anthony Storr convincingly argued that being alone with your own thoughts is the most reliable and productive method of generating ideas. But your own thoughts will be more productive when you have read this book, for it promotes the benefits of simplifying, thinking boldly and being undaunted by challenges.