Luckily for me, in this month’s theme of ideation, Shane has offered up his five essential books on lateral thinking. Here we go…

Book 1: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Dover Thrift Editions)
by Benjamin Franklin
One of the less-known secrets of incredible successes is they tend to obsess with biographies of great women and men that came before them. Franklin’s autobio is a superlative book about a boy (then man) who consistently defied convention and changed the world not by cutting corners but by finding alternate routes; it’s changed the way I think about problem solving in every aspect of my life.

Book 2: Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes
by Maria Konnikova
Sherlock Holmes was the superlative sideways thinker, and in Mastermind Ms. Konnikova elucidates why and how. In the spirit of studying great thinkers, this bio-fic has made me think more differently than almost any other biography.

Book 3: Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
by Austin Kleon
This art project in a book will flip your script on creativity—and that’s the point of lateral thinking. (It’s also highly entertaining.)

Book 4: Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain
by Dubner and Levitt
This book is awesome. In it, the Freakonomics guys come back for a third round, this time with a how-to guide to thinking thoughts that create breakthroughs.

Book 5: Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better
by Clive Thompson
This book got me to reassess how I think about my brain itself, and question my relationship with technology. It’s A+ in getting you into the mood to think a little differently—and with the confidence that you can be smarter than you are.