From the best-sell­ing author of Sub­lim­i­nal and The Drunk­ard’s Walk, a ground­break­ing new look at the neu­ro­science of change – and how elas­tic think­ing can help us thrive in a world chang­ing faster than ever before.

With rapid tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion lead­ing the charge, today’s world is trans­form­ing itself at an extra­or­di­nary and unprece­dent­ed pace. As jobs become more mul­ti­fac­eted, as infor­ma­tion streams mul­ti­ply, and as myr­i­ad devices place increas­ing demands on our atten­tion, we are con­front­ed every day with a pletho­ra of new chal­lenges. For­tu­nate­ly, as Leonard Mlodi­now shows, the human brain is unique­ly engi­neered to adapt.

Draw­ing from cut­ting-edge research in neu­ro­science and psy­chol­o­gy, Mlodi­now takes us on a fas­ci­nat­ing and illu­mi­nat­ing jour­ney through the mechan­ics of our own minds as we nav­i­gate the rapid­ly shift­ing land­scapes around us. Out of the explorato­ry instincts that allowed our ances­tors to pros­per hun­dreds of thou­sands of years ago, humans devel­oped a cog­ni­tive style that Mlodi­now terms ​“elas­tic think­ing,” a col­lec­tion of traits and abil­i­ties that include neophil­ia (an affin­i­ty for nov­el­ty), schizo­typy (a ten­den­cy toward unusu­al per­cep­tion), imag­i­na­tion and idea gen­er­a­tion, pat­tern recog­ni­tion, men­tal flu­en­cy, diver­gent think­ing, and inte­gra­tive think­ing. With his keen acu­men and rapid-fire wit, Mlodi­now gives us the essen­tial tools to har­ness the pow­er of elas­tic think­ing in an end­less­ly dynam­ic world.