From New York Times best-selling author James Geary comes WIT’S END: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It [W. W. Norton; November 13, 2018], a whimsical book that explores every facet of wittiness—from its role in innovation, to why puns demonstrate the essence of creativity. Geary is available for interviews starting Monday, February 4 through Friday, March 1, 2019.
Geary, the deputy curator at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, is the author of four previous books, including New York Times bestseller The World in a Phrase.
Wit is much more than just having a knack for snappy comebacks. It is the quick, instinctive intelligence that allows us to think, say, or do the right thing at the right time in the right place.
Geary can discuss how wit is both visual and verbal, physical and intellectual. There’s the serendipitous wit of scientists, the crafty wit of inventors, the optical wit of artists, and the metaphysical wit of philosophers. Through neuroscience, psychology, folk tales, spirituality, visual art, and literary history, Geary demonstrates that wit and wisdom are really the same thing.

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