Tonight at 6pm at the Clinton School, author John Pollack will discuss “Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation and Sell Our Greatest Ideas.”

The 1995 World Pun Champion and a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, John Pollack has spent more than a decade as a consultant for Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, and public sector leaders. Throughout his career, he has pursued insight and understanding by venturing off the beaten path, intellectually and otherwise. In this spirit, his worldview has been informed by living and working in Africa and Europe, installing seismometers in Antarctica, hitchhiking across Australia, exploring the Caucasus and skippering a boat he built of 165,321 corks down Portugal’s Douro River.

In “Shortcut,” Pollack reveals just how pervasive analogies really are — and how powerful. He also explains how to evaluate the “truth” of any analogy, and how people can hone their ability with analogies to become more creative, perceptive, and persuasive.

A graduate of Stanford University, John began his journalism career as a newspaper reporter for the Hartford Courant, covering a local sewer commission. Later, he worked in Spain as a foreign correspondent, covering everything from terrorism to business to bullfights for media that included the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and Advertising Age. His first book, The World On a String: How to Become a Freelance Foreign Correspondent, grew out of that experience. He speaks fluent Spanish, and has traveled extensively on seven continents.

In addition to Shortcut and The World on a String, John is the author of two other books. Cork Boat tells the story of John’s 30-year quest to build a Viking ship made almost entirely of wine corks, and its 2002 voyage down Portugal’s Douro River. In 2011, Gotham Books published The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics, which explores the surprising role of puns in the rise of modern civilization.