The Creativity Con

From the bestselling and always-prescient author of Listen, Liberal comes a bold indictment of America's chronic obsession with creativity and innovation, showing how these beloved ideas came to dominate the country's political and economic conversation, all while serving to mask inequality and protect elite interests.

Innovation and creativity have been the defining watchwords of American exceptionalism for decades, used by business thinkers, tech gurus, military strategists, educators, and urban planners to describe the country's unique standing in the world. While other countries supposedly suffer from regimentation and a fatal lack of imagination, the United States is often portrayed as an unmatched dynamo of new ideas and products. In his new book, Thomas Frank disabuses us of this notion, offering a bold account of the way creativity and innovation have been used as a kind of ideological cover for policies that reinforce the class system.

Frank uncovers the insidious effects of centring innovation and creativity in rhetoric while, in practice, nurturing exactly the opposite. In the name of these noble goals, he shows, the country's leaders have reoriented the American economy around white-collar knowledge work, cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulated banks, off-shored manufacturing, reoriented cities, and destroyed what is truly creative about this country.

Deeply original, marked by Frank's signature brilliance and acerbic wit, The Creativity Con is a troubling X-ray of post-war American business and political culture - and a crushing indictment of the cliches that have undergirded its many failures.



Praise for People Without Power:
'Brilliantly written, eye-opening ... From 1891 to the rise of Trumpism, Frank walks readers through a minefield of assumptions about populism's nature and history ... Throughout People Without Power, Frank takes pains to look at populism through a broad lens ... His reflection on how the jeans-clad Jimmy Carter wrapped himself in populism to avoid being tagged as a socialist, liberal or conservative is spot-on.'
-Douglas Brinkley, The Washington Post

Praise for Rendezvous with Oblivion:
'Frank's combination of insightful analysis, moral passion, and keen satirical wit make these essays both entertaining and an important commentary on the times.'
-Publishers Weekly

Praise for Listen, Liberal:
'Thoroughly entertaining ... An unabashed polemic ... Frank delights in skewering the sacred cows of coastal liberalism, including private universities, bike paths, microfinance, the Clinton Foundation, "well-meaning billionaires" and any public policy offering "innovation" or "education" as a solution to inequality.'
-New York Times Book Review