A wonderful new book.

— Martha Barnette, A Way with Words

How to Think like Shakespeare is a witty and wise incitement to shape our minds in old ways that will be new to almost all of us. By description and by imitation, Scott Newstok performs an improbable but delightful resurrection of five-hundred-year-old methods of engagement with words and thoughts. And hey: if they worked for Shakespeare, why shouldn’t they work for you?

— Alan Jacobs, author of How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

A lucid, human, terrifically engaging call to remember our better selves and a supremely unstuffy celebration of what’s essential.

— Pico Iyer, author of The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

Ranging widely from the classics right up to the present with apt quotations, all in service of ideas we lose at our peril, How to Think like Shakespeare winningly blends respect for tradition with thoughtful steps toward a more equitable society. It is the work of a Renaissance man in both senses.

— Robert N. Watson, author of Cultural Evolution and Its Discontents: Cognitive Overload, Parasitic Cultures, and the Humanistic Cure

Splendid, tremendously clever, and obviously inspired by a real love of Shakespeare. The whole basic idea is terrific, with wonderful passages to illustrate each new idea.  Bravo!

— Ken Ludwig, author of How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare

How to Think Like Shakespeare is not the work of an activist militating for his cause but a thinker reveling in his work. Newstok reminds us that this work is, above all, fun, and the calling on display is infectious.

— Karl Schuettler, A Patient Cycle

Hugely illuminating and insightful. It should be obligatory reading for all involved in education.

— David Crystal, co-author of Shakespeare’s Words

Conversationally warm and shot through with sudden connections and piercing insights . . . reading the book is a singularly convincing lesson in the very style the book is proposing as being the ideal way to learn.

— Andrew Muir, author of The True Performing of It: Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare

A fun educational tool . . . easy to digest, and the style of writing is fairly easy to follow as well. It reads like a conversation (if you annotate your book) with a very well-read friend who is sharing some ideas with you. . . . If you are looking for a book to make you think, I would highly recommend Scott Newstok’s How to Think Like Shakespeare.

— Bailey Cavender, The Educator’s Room

How to Think like Shakespeare takes the reader on a wild ride through histories of thought and habits of mind. The soil is rich and dense — much like the work of Shakespeare . . . thought stretches across areas as diverse as sociology, neuroscience, literature, languages, history, philosophy and so much more — as it should. I feel dizzy while reading and my to be read list is growing with each page.

— Jessica Manuel, Book Oblivion

Heavily but delightfully peppered with great quotes from great minds throughout history, How to Think like Shakespeare makes for a thoroughly enjoyable read. . . . through metaphor and wit, it makes just as compelling an argument as you’d expect from a mathematical proof. . . . All in all, this is a book I couldn’t do justice in any way in a simple review. Newstok has a deep and wide-ranging knowledge of literature, insight into why words have power, and an understanding of how to craft them. It presents valuable ideas in an engaging format, and will help you understand both our education systems and your own mind better.

— Alexandru Micu, ZME Science

A book that caused me to think and is still nagging at me to continue thinking. . . .The book is one that that will stick with you at the edge of your mind and encourage dabbling.

— Andrew Spencer, Ethics and Culture

A delight to read, the kind of book to carry with you and read in spare moment. . . . this book on education is a bit of an education itself.

— Benjamin Myers, Oklahoma Baptist University

"Newstok has done a remarkable job of bringing together centuries’ worth of thinkers, putting them into conversation, and inviting us to join in”

— Jenny Rebecca Rytting, SMART: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching

Scott Newstok argues persuasively for a return to some of the pedagogical methods that proved so effective in the 1500s.

— Paul Muldoon, Times Literary Supplement

Scott Newstok has written an urgent account of Renaissance education and our own impoverished equivalent. Learned, pacey, full of witty observation — I loved the idea of thinking as humanity’s ‘killer app’ — it is a brilliant enactment of its own central ideas about the importance of liberated thinking and the constitutive pleasures of rhetoric. The chapter titles recall Bacon and Montaigne, essayists of Shakespeare’s time: Newstok is their worthy successor.

— Emma Smith, author of This is Shakespeare

Insightful and joyful, this book is a masterpiece. It invokes and provokes rather than explains. It reminds rather than lectures. It is different from any book I have ever read. And it works. Drawing on the past in the best sense of the term, it reminds us that we are part of a long tradition. Few books make the case for liberal education as creatively as this one does.

— Johann N. Neem, author of What's the Point of College? Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform

Scott Newstok’s latest book, How to Think Like Shakespeare, could be just the game changer the teacher (and administrator should have) ordered. . . . I couldn’t help but be won over by his earnest enthusiasm for the subject and ended up wanting to hear still more.

— Robert M. LoAlbo, PlayShakespeare.com

A lively and evocative new volume . . . a beautifully written, succinct description of educational principles derived from the best features of a renaissance education. The book is “deliberately short,” but packed with quotations from the Bard and scores of great authors, all combined to make us think – and, with a little luck, to think more like “our myriad-minded Shakespeare.” I highly recommend Newstok’s book for its pith, clarity, and insight – and the sheer breadth of its bibliography, including delightful footnotes, a bibliographic essay, and an index of Shakespearean cornucopia.

— Robert Jackson, Institute for Classical Education

The author’s enthusiasm, a comprehensive coverage of his subject matter, and the common sense inherent in his value judgments, work together to whip up a likeminded enthusiasm in his readers. . . . no one can deny the passion, the brilliance of the thought, the cogency of the argument, and the depth and breadth of the writer’s knowledge.

— Ian Lipke, Queensland Reviewers Collective

Great energy and clarity . . . entertaining throughout: the writer convinces us that he is learning with us, that we are learning with him . . . One of the great features of this eloquent, uplifting, enthusiastic yet realistic and beautifully produced book is its strong sense of moment.

— Tony Voss, Shakespeare in Southern Africa

Its surface pleasures take the shape of an inviting complexity of argument, quotation, and enthusiasm that dress a body of learning in bright colors of conversation; its deeper reward is nothing less than a stance toward life, and a mode of making meaning, that is by turns practical and profound. . . . An uncommon commonplace book, a convivial defense of liberal education, and a toolbox of practices and inspirations, How to Think Like Shakespeare is flirtatious in its learning and altogether captivating.

— Jim Mustich, author of 1000 Books to Read before you Die

A slim, surprising exploration of the value that deeply human engagement has in a world full of data points and distractions.

— Rebecca Koenig, EdSurge

How to Think Like Shakespeare playfully juxtaposes early modern and contemporary habits of thought by way of wide-ranging examples. . . . thought-provoking and enjoyable, it’s the type of book that I would like to recommend to my university students to read for pleasure — precisely because it is brief and lively and could easily engender serious reflection about how we think.

— Michael Cop, Parergon

The single best book I ever read on understanding Shakespeare's mind!

— Jacopo della Quercia, author of License to Quill

A lovely little book.

— Phillip Dolitsky, First Things

How to Think Like Shakespeare dangles insights woven from dozens of sources and it enticed me to try to think in ways toward which it gestures, to turn and assemble them, to sit at this table and be touched by the unexpected in the well-known.

— William West, Studies in English Literature

It’s short and sweet. It’s lovely — a beautiful little book.

— Russ Roberts, EconTalk

With crisp, lapidary prose, Newstok writes authoritatively about the educational norms and practices that helped shape Shakespeare’s mind. . . . As Newstok essays the contours of a Renaissance education, he demonstrates with verve the effect it’s had on his own thinking. Put otherwise, the book is Newstok’s essay at thinking—and it’s a sterling attempt. . . . It will be of interest to any reader or teacher of Shakespeare—and it should be of interest to any serious reader or teacher. Watching Newstok think with Shakespeare is inspiring, and he proves an amiable guide. — Nathan M. Antiel, Principia: A Journal of Classical Education

A fine, playful new book . . . it is delightful to read. . . . The elegance of the physical book, each essay/chapter prefaced with a gorgeous image that comments on its subject matter . . . embodies the artisanal practice Newstok celebrates, as does the craftiness of his own style . . . its method is exuberantly positive.

— Elizabeth Hanson, Shakespeare Studies

A wonderfully light-footed and erudite investigation of education (and so much more), by means of Shakespeare (and so much more). Scott Newstok’s book, a playful delight, also delivers a serious pedagogical punch.

— Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

A beautiful study of how we learn, why we write, what our education is for — and by “we,” I mean everyone. Lovely book for anyone who wants to write, read, think better . . .

— Arthur Phillips, author of The King at the Edge of the World

Scott Newstok’s How to Think like Shakespeare is something to treasure. The book lays out a case for Shakespeare’s vital connection to the lives we live today, opening the door to new ways of thinking and experiencing the world, which are essential to a life well lived.

— Michael Witmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

As a concise history of Western pedagogical development, How To Think Like Shakespeare succeeds beautifully. . . . By the end of How To Think Like Shakespeare, [Newstok] has us thoroughly convinced. To think and create effectively requires one to train and practice. By apprenticing ourselves to the past, we can ourselves become links in the glorious chain of human intellectual achievement.

— Fernanda Moore, Chapter 16



This is a little gem of a book. It builds on a brilliant piece that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education a couple of years ago, but goes far beyond its scope. It combines an exploration of Humanist ideas of education with a devastating critique of the disease of managerialism that has invaded so many parts of our life, including education. Among other things, it offers the pleasures of a modern commonplace book, brimming with so many choice thoughts that you feel the urge to scribble them down. The book is written with elegance and wit; the last chapter in particular is a tour de force.
— Indira Ghose, University of Fribourg, Switzerland

This delightful book is an odd treasure. . . . [it’s] an educational manifesto that should make for better people, better schools, colleges and universities, and better social relations between and among free citizens. There is a potential revolution in this odd treasure of a little book. Give it to some of your colleagues, if you think it isn't too late for them, but give it to all of your students. Let them know what they may have been missing – before it is too late.

— Scott Crider, Ben Jonson Journal

What a joy it was to read a book about Renaissance literature and education that not only describes these things with full respect for their historical peculiarities, but also entertains the idea that they belong (or could belong) to us in the present, as equipment for living! And what a pleasure to read essays rather than articles! . . . an achievement worthy of celebration . . . I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend that anyone who cares about teaching and learning read it again and again.

— Sean Keilen, Cahiers Élisabéthains

A lucid, attractive essay that wears its learning lightly and with style. . . . How to Think Like Shakespeare would have been a good book at any time; now it is a necessary one.

— David Randall, Academic Questions

A bracing, witty argument for a pedagogy that is at once old and new. . . . what he demonstrates in his playful, infectiously enthusiastic pages is a more modest and more proximate idea of freedom: the kind that appears in the sheer joy of reading and learning.

— Samuel Fallon, Renaissance Quarterly

If to think like Shakespeare may appear as an arduous if not impossible task, thinking with Shakespeare, trying to absorb the complexity of his reasoning, would be a good enough exercise in nuanced thinking and daring creativity.

— Gabriela Dragnea Horvath, Voyages Journal of Contemporary Humanism

Newstok’s passion for his subject comes across to the reader throughout the book.

— Peter Sutton, Forum for Modern Language Studies