Books by Howard Gardner

Selected Bibliography

Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Basic Books, $18.00 pb

Hailed by educators throughout the world, Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences has been applied in hundreds of classrooms and school distrincts since Frames of Mind was first published in 1983. Gardner challengesthe widlely held notion that intelligence is a a single general capacity possessed by every individual to a greater or lesser extent. Amassing a wealth of evidence, Gardner posits the existence of a number of intelligences that ultimately yield a unique cognitive profile for each person.

Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century
Basic Books, $16.00 pb

Intelligence Reframed is a much-needed report on the theory of Multiple Intelligences, its evolution and revisions since Howard Gardner's 1983 landmark work, Frames of Mind. He offers practical guidance on the educational uses of the theory and responds to the critiques leveled against him. He also introduces two new intelligences (existential intelligence and naturalist intelligence) and argues that the concept of intelligence should be broadened, but not so absurdly that it includes every human virtue and value. Ultimately, argues Gardner, possessing a basic set of seven or eight intelligences is not only a unique trademark of the human species, but also perhaps even a working definition of the species. Gardner also offers provocative ideas about creativity, leadership, and moral excellence, and speculates about the relationship between Multiple Intelligences and the world of work in the future.

The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts and Standardized Tests, the K-12 Education That Every Child Deserves
Penguin Books, $14.00 pb

Howard Gardner offers a controversial and far-reaching work on the goals of education. His argument -- aimed at parents, educators, and the general public alike -- is that K-12 education should enhance a deep understanding of three principles: truth, beauty, and goodness. Gardner explores how teaching students three subjects -- the theory of evolution, the music of Mozart, and the lessons of the Holocaust -- would illuminate the nature of truth, beauty, and morality.

Far from the fact-based, standardized-test mentality that has gripped both policy makesrs and the public, Gardner envisions an educational system that will help younger generations rise to the challenges of the future, while preserving the traditional goals of a 'humane' education while preparing younger generations for the challenges of the future.

Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership
with Emma Laskin
Basic Books, $18.50 pb

Applying a cognitive lens to leadership, Gardner identifies one of its crucial but hitherto neglected components: the mind of the leader and minds of his or her followers. Effective leaders create new stories that wrestle successfully with stories that already populate the minds of their followers. Gardner imposes his framework of Multiple Intelligences on a wide spectrum of leaders using case studies on such figures as Margaret Mead, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Creating Minds : An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi
Basic Books, $20.00 pb

Gardner gives us a unique view of creativity and intelligence through the riveting portraits of seven figures who each reinvented an area of human endeavor. Using his concept of Multiple Intelligences as a point of departure, Gardner examines seven extraordinary individuals -- Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, T.S. Eliot, Martha Graham, and Mahatma Gandhi -- each an outstanding exemplar of one kind of intelligence. In their remarkable stories, Gardner discovers patterns crucial to our understanding of the creative process. Understanding the nature of their distinct creative breakthroughs not only sheds light on their achievements but also helps to elucidate the times and circumstances that formed these creators and that they in turn helped to define.

Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach
Basic Books, $18.00 pb

Merging cognitive science with the educational agenda, Gardner begins with a fascinating look at the young child's mind and concludes with a sweeping program for educational reform. The book shows how both the ancient art of apprenticeship and the modern children's museum both work because learning takes place in context.

Extraordinary Minds: Portraits of 4 Exceptional Individuals and an Examination of Our Own Extraordinariness
Basic Books, $12.00 pb

In Extraordinary Minds, Gardner poses an important question: Is there a set of traits shared by the truly great achievers -- those we deem extraordinary -- no matter the field or the time period in which they did their important work? In an attempt to answer this question, Gardner first examines how most of us mature into more or less competent adults. He then examines closely four persons who lived unquestionably extraordinary lives -- Mozart, Freud, Woolf, and Gandhi -- using each as an exemplar of a different kind of extraordinariness: Mozart as the master of a discipline, Freud as the innovative founder of a new discipline, Woolf as the great introspector, and Gandhi as the influencer.

"Howard Gardner's analysis of 'Extraordinariness' is quite marvelous -- it traces universals in extraordinary development without any sense of reduction, so that the uniqueness of his four subjects shines out as clearly as their similarities." -- Oliver Sacks, M.D. author of An Anthropologist on Mars

Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice, A Reader
Basic Books, $18.50 pb

Howard Gardner's conception of individual competence is changing the face of education today. This reader brings together previously published and original work by Gardner and his colleagues at Project Zero to provide a coherent picture of what we have learned about the educational applications of Multiple Intelligences theory from projects in schools and formal research over the last decade.