I must be one of the few people who did not care much for Walter Isaacson’s portrayal of Steve Jobs. As I wrote here,
“Stylistically, I would have loved for him to have the started the book around 2000 and spent 3/4 of the book on the amazing string of Apple and Pixar achievements since then, and SJ’s own just as amazing willpower and strength through all the medical procedures he endured, and woven in as appropriate snippets from SJ’s previous history. But Walt presents a chronology from birth so the first half of the 600+ pages is somewhat plodding and repetitive. Plenty of references to vegan diets, body odor, drugs, piercing glances and “reality distortion” fields. And it leaves him much less space to flesh out so many interesting people and incidents around SJ. I would love to have seen more on Laurene Powell, Tim Cook, Apple’s retail stores, its Apps ecosystem.”
Leonardo Da Vinci is one of my heroes. That was reinforced while I wrote The New Polymath, where I studied a number of historical and contemporary polymaths. I knew Walter was writing a book on Leonardo but I was not that interested till I saw him on stage this week at an SAP event (see here starting around 6:00 – registration required). I was intrigued and went to B&N to flip through the book. He had me at the introduction – there was plenty of focus on STEM, not just art or personal quirks
“Around the time that he reached the unnerving milestone of turning thirty, Leonardo da Vinci wrote a letter to the ruler of Milan listing the reasons he should be given a job. He had been moderately successful as a painter in Florence, but he had trouble finishing his commissions and was searching for new horizons. In the first ten paragraphs, he touted his engineering skills, including his ability to design bridges, waterways, cannons, armored vehicles, and public buildings. Only in the eleventh paragraph, at the end, did he add that he was also an artist. “Likewise in painting, I can do everything possible,”he wrote.
Yes, he could. He would go on to create the two most famous paintings in history; The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and engineering.”
The next decision was hardback, or Kindle version? At 600+ pages and 3 pounds, the latter was a no brainer. But I flipped through the book some more. There are stunning photos, a result of Walter extensively mining the many notebooks Leonardo left behind. So hardback it was.
Walter explores many STEM aspects – Leonardo on hydraulics, the human anatomy, his mathematical precision (and a section on time he spent with Luca Pacioli, known to accountants as the father of double-entry bookkeeping) and quite a bit more. And he weaves it around his personality, his sexuality, and of course his remarkable art. To Walter’s credit, he spent time with a number of Renaissance period experts to cover lots of fascinating ground.
I particularly liked the “humanizing” of Leonardo
“Yes, he was a genius: wildly imaginative, passionately curious, and creative across multiple disciplines. But we should be wary of that word. Slapping the “genius” label on Leonardo oddly minimizes him by making it seem as if he were touched by lightning…..In fact, Leonardo’s genius was a human one, wrought by his own will and ambition. It did not come from being the divine recipient, like Newton or Einstein, of a mind with so much processing power that we mere mortals cannot fathom it. Leonardo had almost no schooling and could barely read Latin or do long division. His genius was of the type we can understand, even take lessons from.”
Which brings me to my only quibble with the book. He spends the last few pages on a section called “Learning from Leonardo”. I suppose he included that because he anticipated getting all kinds of self-improvement questions. But it comes across somewhat glib. I still get questions asking me how to try and become a polymath in today’s specialized world. I tell them we certainly have people like Bill Joy and Nathan Myhrvold, but given the massive explosion in both the knowledge we have and in the Grand Challenges we face, it is better to think of The New Polymath as diverse teams of highly skilled people like the examples of the GE Research Center I had in the book.
Unlike the Jobs book, I can heartily recommend this one. Especially the hardback version with the stunning illustrations that Getty Images and others have carefully digitized and preserved for many more future generations to appreciate the brilliance of Leonardo and the amazing place and time in history he so well represents.
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