Lone Genius

A blackout poetry piece reading "Reach out. Not everything we need is in ourselves"

The Ploughshares Round-Down: “Not Everything We Need Is In Ourselves”

Creation is often imagined as inherently isolated and intimate: a Walden Pond-esque activity improved by seclusion and destroyed by wifi, phone calls, and . . . well, friends. So I’ve been thrilled this month to see a few books being celebrated for challenging the Lone Genius Myth: Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators, Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Powers of Two, and Stephen Johnson’s How…