Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-242) and index.

Introduction
1. Between the Commonplace and the Sublime
2. The Birth of Brainstorming
3. Creativity as Self-Actualization
4. Synectics at the Shoe
5. The Creative Child
6. Revolution on Madison Avenue
7. Creativity Is Dead . . .
8. From Progress to Creativity
9. Long Live Creativity
Conclusion: What Is to Be Done?
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

"Samuel Weil Franklin shows that in postwar America, the newfangled term "creativity" was the product of campaigns to harness the power of the individual to the demands of capitalist production and global hegemony. Franklin reveals that the champions of creativity were psychologists, educators, and management consultants who benefited from postwar technological progress yet worried that the resulting society might promote conformity and stifle ingenuity. Against increasingly reified institutions and systems, the "creative individual" took on a wealth of romantic, generative, and democratic associations. Creativity was the motive force behind the postwar individual, the literal spark-and cannon fodder-of progress.