HOW TO THINK LIKE SHAKESPEARE

"How to Think like Shakespeare is a witty and wise incitement to shape our minds in old ways that will be new to almost all of us. By description and by imitation, Scott Newstok performs an improbable but delightful resurrection of five-hundred-year-old methods of engagement with words and thoughts. And hey: if they worked for Shakespeare, why shouldn't they work for you?" —Alan Jacobs, author of How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds "A wonderfully light-footed and erudite investigation of education (and so much more), by means of Shakespeare (and so much more). Scott Newstok's book, a playful delight, also delivers a serious pedagogical punch." —Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer "Scott Newstok has written an urgent account of Renaissance education and our own impoverished equivalent. Learned, pacey, full of witty observation—I loved the idea of thinking as humanity's 'killer app'—it is a brilliant enactment of its own central ideas about the importance of liberated thinking and the constitutive pleasures of rhetoric. The chapter titles recall Bacon and Montaigne, essayists of Shakespeare's time: Newstok is their worthy successor." —Emma Smith, University of Oxford "Scott Newstok's How to Think like Shakespeare is something to treasure. The book lays out a case for Shakespeare's vital connection to the lives we live today, opening the door to new ways of thinking and experiencing the world, which are essential to a life well lived." —Michael Witmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library "Insightful and joyful, this book is a masterpiece. It invokes and provokes rather than explains. It reminds rather than lectures. It is different from any book I have ever read. And it works. Drawing on the past in the best sense of the term, it reminds us that we are part of a long tradition. Few books make the case for liberal education as creatively as this one does." —Johann N. Neem, author of What's the Point of College? Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform "Ranging widely from the classics right up to the present with apt quotations, all in service of ideas we lose at our peril, How to Think like Shakespeare winningly blends respect for tradition with thoughtful steps toward a more equitable society. It is the work of a Renaissance man in both senses." —Robert N. Watson, author of Cultural Evolution and Its Discontents: Cognitive Overload, Parasitic Cultures, and the Humanistic Cure