When it comes to shaping the culture, Joshua Wolf Shenk argues, two is the magic number, not just because of the dyads behind everything from South Park to the American Civil Rights movement to Starry Night, but because of the nature of creative thinking.

Proposing that "chemistry" is not just a fascinating phenomenon but the essential engine of creativity, Powers of Two argues that duos-as opposed to the lone genius or the hive mind-are the best way to model how great work is made.

 The book weaves together stories from scores of pairs, alongside context from social psychology, to articulate the essential stages of creative connection: meeting, confluence, dialectics, distance, infinite games, and interruption.

 The Atlantic featured an excerpt from the book--on the creative tension between John Lennon and Paul McCartney--on the cover of its July/August 2014 issue. An Atlantic sidebar drew out some of the more evocative remarks by pairs featured in the book. David Brooks drew on the Atlantic piece to develop an idea central to Po2. The book was also previewed in a New York Times op-ed and on NPR's All Things Considered.

More

Joshua Wolf Shenk on the book

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/creative_pairs/2010/09/two_is_the_magic_number.html

 "The End of Genius," Joshua Wolf Shenk in the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-genius.html?_r=0

New Yorker article on Partnerships

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/an-auteur-is-not-a-brand

 Joshua Wolf Shenk "Lincoln's Melancholy" with Rosalyn Carter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgb9JrrwEMw

Joshua Wolf Shenk is an essayist, author, and curator based in Los Angeles. His most recent book, Powers of Two: Seeking the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs (Eamon Dolan Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). His magazine pieces include cover stories inHarper's, Time, and The Atlantic, where his essay "What Makes Us Happy?" was the most read article in the history of that magazine's website. His work has also appeared in Slate,The New Yorker, The New York Times, and the national bestseller Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression, edited by Nell Casey. His first book, Lincoln's Melancholy, was named one of the best books of 2005 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, and won awards from The Abraham Lincoln Institute, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the National Mental Health Association. When he's not reporting and writing, Josh spends his time leading and supporting creative communities. He is a curator, storyteller and advisor to The Moth; vice-chair emeritus of the board of directors, he currently serves on the general council. He is also a past director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College, where he curated programs and festivals and directed a small literary press. Shenk consults to the Erikson Institute for Education and Research at the Austen Riggs Center, where he develops creative programs, including Arts in Mind, a conversation series on the intersections of the creative arts and psychology co-hosted by the New School in New York City. Josh has taught creative writing at The New School, New York University, Washington College, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and in private groups. His other publications include In Lincoln's Hand, co-edited by Harold Holzer, an anthology of original manuscripts with original essays by luminaries including John Updike, Toni Morrison, and Tony Kushner. Other honors include residencies at  Yaddo, MacDowell, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Norman Mailer Center; a Rosalynn Carter fellowship in mental health journalism at the Carter Center; a Japan Society Media Fellowship; and the Frank Whiting scholarship at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Josh was a 2005-06 fellow in non-fiction literature at the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in Silverlake and is the father to a four-year-old boy who, like Josh, has webbed toes.