The Gift
Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World
Ranked #35 in Creativity
“The best book I know of for talented but unacknowledged creators. . . . A masterpiece.” —Margaret Atwood
“No one who is invested in any kind of art . . . can read The Gift and remain unchanged.” —David Foster Wallace
By now a modern classic, The Gift is a brilliantly orchestrated defense of the value of creativity and of its importance in a culture increasingly governed by money and overrun with commodities. This book is even more necessary today than when it first... more
Reviews and Recommendations
We've comprehensively compiled reviews of The Gift from the world's leading experts.
Seth Godin Author, Marketer, EntrepreneurRecommends this book
Austin Kleon I’m not really sure what to say about this book. It just kind of re-affirmed a lot of what I’ve been thinking about making art: that it’s important for me to have a day job, so I can separate work from play, and that the more generous you are with your audience (through blogging, teaching, sharing, etc.) the better off you’ll be as an artist—spiritually and financially. (Source)
Armina Sirbu It's amazing to realize how gifts have impacted and influenced the human race. (Source)
Lucy Newlyn The Gift is not a book about Wordsworth. The subtitle of the UK edition is “How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World”. Lewis Hyde looks at creativity not as the route to celebrity, but rather in terms of a “gift economy”. He plays off the great Marcel Mauss’s 1923 anthropological essay The Gift, building on Mauss’s idea that there’s no such thing as a free gift – when you give something, you expect something in return. If you apply this notion to creativity, thinking of creative artefacts as gifts that elicit further gifts, then you begin to understand creativity in terms of community –... (Source)
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