Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up
Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up
by David Byrne
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About the Book
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
“Byrne guides us on a captivating quest to understand how we come to remember forgotten ideas, inventions and technologies . . . Sleeping Beauties belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who cares about creativity or culture.” —Adam Grant, The New York Times Book Review
From incomparable creative force David Byrne, a brilliant and inspiring reckoning with how breakthroughs across the arts and sciences get forgotten, and how they get rediscovered
It’s nice to believe in a meritocracy of ideas—genius is always recognized, innovation always seized upon and rewarded. In fact, so many of the people we now acknowledge as the world’s great creators initially got little traction for their work. It faded out, and only later—often much later—did it somehow came roaring back to life.
Discoveries as diverse as dark matter, lichen, and continental drift . . . technologies from solar panels to the steam engine . . . artists from Bach to Bruegel, Vermeer to Melville . . . all, David Byrne shows us, were sleeping beauties. Why did they fall asleep? How did they wake back up? Ranging across centuries and the full scope of human endeavor, Byrne arrives at important conclusions that serve as a lens for bringing to light new seeds for our future breakthroughs.
Sleeping Beauties is a master class in how not to be blind to the next great thing. Several times throughout history, the shock of the new landed like a blow on vested interests and entrenched views, putting innovation on hold. Suppression emerged from pushback, the absence of key supporters, or simply a lack of complementary economic conditions.
But more important even than why ideas go dormant is why they reawaken. Again and again, Byrne shows, someone from a different discipline breaks into the silo. Frequently it’s someone open to metaphorical thinking, to the counterintuitive. Hierarchies and taxonomies have their place, but they can reward insiders and punish outsiders. Oftentimes, it is the winds of change that blow away the sand that has buried momentous ideas.
Sleeping Beauties is humbling but it is also remarkably hopeful. These stories add up to a compass that leads us to the courage to try new things and the wisdom to embrace them. In a time that can seem all too dark, it’s a powerful source of freely available light, delightful in itself and fit for all our human endeavors.
About the Author
David Byrne is a musician, performer, writer, and multidisciplinary artist who has captivated audiences since 1975, when he co-founded Talking Heads. Over the course of his career he has released 20 studio albums, scored films — most notably The Last Emperor, for which he received Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Grammy wins — and brought his singular vision to the stage, from the Broadway production American Utopia, which received a Special Tony Award and was adapted into a film directed by Spike Lee, to Here Lies Love, his disco musical that received four Tony Award nominations including Best Original Score, to Theater of the Mind, an immersive theatrical journey co-created with writer Mala Gaonkar. His visual art — including photography and installation works — has been exhibited internationally, and he is the founder of Reasons to Be Cheerful, an online publication devoted to solutions-based journalism. Byrne has published multiple books, including Bicycle Diaries, How Music Works, and Arboretum.
Editorial Reviews
“The omnivorous nature of [David Byrne’s] curiosity is nowhere more evident than in his latest undertaking, an exploration of how creativity comes to life, how its fruit can be forgotten and how lost ideas can be resurrected . . . The surprisingly breezy volume is a polymath performance . . . It is delightful, though perhaps not surprising, that a musician can limn the history of vibrating strings to explain why J.S. Bach was taken for granted as a composer for nearly a century. It’s downright dazzling that the same author can unpack the paradigm-shattering biology of lichens, neglected for generations after its discovery in 1869.” —David Von Drehle, Washington Post
“Byrne’s new book is a delightfully interdisciplinary compendium of these reanimated ideas.” —Emma Alpern, Vulture
“Byrne guides us on a captivating quest to understand how we come to remember forgotten ideas, inventions and technologies. With striking dexterity and range, he explores how advocates reawakened Bach’s compositions and Vermeer’s paintings after one and two centuries of slumber; how technological advances rekindled theories of continental drift and black holes; how accidents resuscitated hand-washing and genetics; and how war renewed interest in the submarine and The Great Gatsby . . . He is acutely aware that there is no surefire formula for making ideas last or bringing them back to life. What he presents is far more valuable: a deeply researched, stimulating inspection of how the marketplace of ideas shifts, and what steps we can take to shift it. Sleeping Beauties belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who cares about creativity or culture.” —Adam Grant, The New York Times Book Review
“In this captivating, thoughtful new book, Byrne looks at the nature of ideas, specifically those that seem promising and then lose steam—only to be picked up again later to change the world. The book is not only a fine reminder in this AI age of the potential of the human mind but also an ode to collaboration. The only bad idea here we can see would be not cracking it open.” —Town & Country
“Byrne’s writerly voice is conversational and engaging as he marvels at the sheer scope of human ingenuity and the alchemy of time, place and people that leads to world-changing awakenings. He wants readers to keep an eye out for sleeping beauties, too; after all, he writes in this fascinating celebration of curiosity and creativity, ‘a little more humility might allow us some fresh insights.’” —BookPage
“If music doesn’t pan out for Byrne, he has a viable sideline as a pop-history writer—he has a wry, entertaining, and informed voice whether he’s discussing Vermeer’s paintings or water-management systems in ancient India.” —Kirkus
“From Botticelli’s paintings to The Great Gatsby to handwashing, some of humanity’s most important achievements in culture, science, and technology were abandoned and then re-embraced years or sometimes centuries later, explains musician and artist Byrne in this delightful survey of rediscovered art and ideas. . . . It’s a wonderful and humbling celebration of the lost and found.” —Publishers Weekly