Book Review: Leonardo Da Vinci

I must confess to some minor disappointment in this book. I don’t know much about Da Vinci and have been looking for an opportunity to learn more. Isaacson’s biography was excellent in part of that goal but incomplete. The book would be better titled “The Works of Leonardo Da Vinci”, for it does an exceptional job of describing Da Vinci’s drawing, painting, engineering and philosophical studies. And it pursues them in the chronological order of his life. A PDF that comes with the audiobook and surely must be included with the print version is extremely helpful in showing the works that Isaacson describes. Yet, other than constant references to his genius and his intense curiosity, there is precious little in the book about what Da Vinci was like, what he enjoyed, what drove him and so on. We get tremendous and very interesting details about Da Vinci’s art and work. We get all too little about the man.