It is a saga of Heroes of the Imagination, creators who have brought something new into the arts - Homer, Joyce, Giotto, Picasso, Leonardo, Handel, Wagner - from the dazzling vision of the Hindus to the indifference of Confucius and the silence of Buddha to Herman Melville, Kakfka, Ruskin and a host of others. A magisterial work that finds order in the 'random flexings of the imagination' and reveals 'how the new adds to the old and how the old enriches the new, how Picasso enhances Leonardo and how Homer illuminates Joyce'. 'There are few writers who could tackle so vast a subject with as much verve or self-assurance or infectious enthusiasm as Boorstin. He combines lively opinion and a distinguished historian's erudition, with a first-class journalist's clarity and an eye for the revealing anecdote.'-USA Today.