Rating: 
Summary: Concise but informative look at an amazing man
Review: Heard the taped version of LEONARDO DA VINCI by Sherwin
Nuland, a concise but informative look at the man who was a
successful painter, architect, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist . . . how he accomplished all he did has always amazed me! . . . this book does a good job of helping to explain the basis behind Da Vinci's insatiable curiosity . . . the author, a surgeon and author, also helps explain his subject's longtime fascination with anatomy--first as the basis for his painting and then as the key component in his aim to systematize all knowledge of nature.
Rating:
Summary: Great Resource
Review: I bought this book because I needed to learn about Da Vinci's life, but didn't have time to do a lot of research or read a lot. Nuland gives a good overview of his life in an interesting and intriguing style of writing. I would also say that if you are particularly interested in the anatomical research of Da Vinci, this is an excellent resource as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Superb Introduction to Leonardo Da Vinci
Review: I have read all the Penguin Lives (except for Virginia Woolf; next on my list) and this one is the best of the series. It is such because it meets the perceived goals of these books.Most of the subjects are mystical; persons with whom we hold an inexplicable fascination. Well, Nuland does an excellent job in explaining this fascination, which he clearly holds. His love of Da Vinci's life and works is manifest. Even though I have never read any of his other books, Nuland leaves me with this impression that this was the project of a lifetime. Pengiun Lives are necessarily brief. The best ones leave the reader anxious to find out more. Nuland has succeeded with me on this count as well. (So did Edmund White's biography of Proust) It is a pleasure to recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A DaVinci I never knew
Review: I was aware that in addition to being a master painter DaVinci was also a visionary scientist with ideas far ahead of his time, but I had no idea that he had made such remarkable leaps forward in the investigation of anatomy. This is a very interesting side of Leonardo that I'm glad to have learned more about. Even so, I don't know if it deserves to degree of focus this biography gives it. This work gives a functional overview of the major events of DaVinci's life and dabbles a bit in the interpretation of a few of his more famous works of art. But it is first and foremost a biography of DaVinci the anatomist, to the detriment (it seems to me) of DaVinci the artist and DaVinci the mechanical engineer. Beyond that, two things bugged me about this book. First, the author is a bit preoccupied with the idea of Leonardo's homosexuality and uses that as a tool to pschoanalyze many areas of his life. The speculations on his early childhood are almost exclusively retrospections guessed at by looking backward from an adult homosexual male. The second thing that bothered me was the author's treatment of DaVinci's religious beliefs. I recognize that religion may not have been a central focus in DaVinci's life, but he does seem to have had a definite belief in God, whearas Nuland more or less apologizes for that fact whenever he is forced to bring it up and it seems that he would like to simply dismiss it as one of the areas in which DaVinci was a product of his times.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Introduction to Leonardo Da Vinci!
Review: Nuland is the author of the best-selling How We Die and clinical professor of surgery at Yale, where he teaches medical history and ethics. In this "Penguin Life" biography, his characteristically nonacademic, essay-like style is interspersed with clearly labeled opinions about disputed topics regarding the artist's life, such as his sexual orientation and activity. Nuland devotes the first 120 pages of his brief book to Leonardo's pursuit of life as what we would call a scientist. The remaining 50 pages are focused specifically on his works as an anatomist. Nuland chronicles Leonardo's insights and mistakes and discusses his place in the history of anatomical studies. Leonardo was the first to make many discoveries in science and anatomy, but few of his contemporaries ever knew of his achievements. Michael White's Leonardo: The First Scientist (LJ 8/00) also discusses Leonardo's scientific life but is longer and much more comprehensive. Nuland's book is written for a general audience and is a bit more accessible. If you can afford only one book, get the White. Otherwise, Nuland's is a good choice for public and college libraries.
Rating:
Summary: A well written book on the life and work of a mastermind.
Review: Sherwin Nuland writes about the world's greatest genius in the same way a surgeon would methodically approach an operation. Sherwin Nuland is Dr. Nuland, Clinical Professor of Surgery at Yale University, where he also teaches medical history. His writing is direct, scientific and unembellished and, when done, he has laid out the life and works of Leonardo before you. Nuland addresses the personal life of this grand master in the first thirty pages. Nuland discusses the strong indications that Leonardo was homosexual and dialogues with many of Leonardo's previous biographers, including Sigman Freud. Leonardo was an illegitimate child, whose education was only until the age of 15, never married or had even one tryst with the opposite sex. Throughout his life he was subservient to the wishes of the patrons upon whom he relied upon for income. Interesting is the blemished reputation Leonardo had as an artist who started scores of works only to leave behind him a myriad of unfinished paintings, sculptures and drawings. For Dr. Nuland Leonardo de Vinci's anatomical drawings were his crowing work. For thirteen hundred years before Leonardo the medical world had relied upon the medicine and anatomy of the second century Greek physician, Galen. The magnitude of the forward leap that Leonardo gave science was remarkable, and "remarkable" is an understatement. Leonardo de Vinci dared to think beyond the accepted medical orthodoxy of Galen. Nuland writes, "To question the magisterial Galen was to question the entire framework of medicine." Leonardo, dared to ask not 'how' but 'why'. Leonardo was an extraordinary genius whose range of interests was vast. His perceptions and talents were matchless for his day. He reformed and revolutionized almost everything he enthusiastically immersed himself in: painting, architecture, interior design, engineering mathematics, astronomy, military ordinances, flight, optics, geology, botany the diversion of rivers and the drainage of swamps, city planning and lastly, the functioning of the parts of the body - anatomy. This book is not a gripping read and Nuland's cannot, in 166 pages, do justice to the biography of such a person. What it can do is introduce you to this great man and give you a sampling of his life and his legacy. This Nuland does well. The book reads fast and the subject is fascinating. Recommended. Four Stars.
Rating:
Summary: Highly readable, astute
Review: The biographies in the Penguin Lives series share a mission to take a well-known life whose extant facts are obscured and bring it "to life" through an inspired matching of subject and author. That, and Penguin aims for brevity and narrative flair. Sherwin Nuland's LEONARDO DA VINCI is the fourth volume in the series I've read, and while I did not find it ultimately as satisfying as Carol Shields' JANE AUSTIN or RWB Lewis's DANTE, it is pretty darn good. Nuland, a professor of clinical surgery at Yale University and the author of the award-winning HOW WE DIE, took on a formidable challenge in Leonardo da Vinci. The man lived a long life, particularly for his time, and he was all over the map. He was an engineer, an artist, a scientist. He did nothing in linear fashion. He often started a project and lost interest in it; the finished products for which he is known are just the tip of the iceberg. Though he once spoke of writing 121 books, Leonardo never sat down to create one coherent manuscript; instead, his legacy was thousands of pages of notes in no particular order, that a few adventuresome archivists since his death have shaped into various portfolios here and there. Given that and the mission of brevity, it is too much, I suppose, to expect the book to touch all the bases. Nuland chooses a few major battles, among them what enabled the genius (revisiting Freud's thesis of homosexuality), and the genius revealed through Leonardo's anatomical studies. Particularly in respect to the latter, Nuland is highly qualified to instruct in just how accurate the drawings are and how far-sighted were the conclusions for their time. I wish Nuland had offered up some other information: What was the environment of a dissecting laboratory in those days? Has anyone ever investigated the possibility that Leonardo may have been ADHD or entertained some other disorder that affected his organizational skills but which also enabled the compensatory visual and intellectual skills? How exactly did he die? If he was appreciated for his art work in his own time, and known for being well liked, how was his death received? Where is he buried? Stuff like that.
Rating:
Summary: Highly readable, astute
Review: The biographies in the Penguin Lives series share a mission to take a well-known life whose extant facts are obscured and bring it "to life" through an inspired matching of subject and author. That, and Penguin aims for brevity and narrative flair. Sherwin Nuland's LEONARDO DA VINCI is the fourth volume in the series I've read, and while I did not find it ultimately as satisfying as Carol Shields' JANE AUSTIN or RWB Lewis's DANTE, it is pretty darn good. Nuland, a professor of clinical surgery at Yale University and the author of the award-winning HOW WE DIE, took on a formidable challenge in Leonardo da Vinci. The man lived a long life, particularly for his time, and he was all over the map. He was an engineer, an artist, a scientist. He did nothing in linear fashion. He often started a project and lost interest in it; the finished products for which he is known are just the tip of the iceberg. Though he once spoke of writing 121 books, Leonardo never sat down to create one coherent manuscript; instead, his legacy was thousands of pages of notes in no particular order, that a few adventuresome archivists since his death have shaped into various portfolios here and there. Given that and the mission of brevity, it is too much, I suppose, to expect the book to touch all the bases. Nuland chooses a few major battles, among them what enabled the genius (revisiting Freud's thesis of homosexuality), and the genius revealed through Leonardo's anatomical studies. Particularly in respect to the latter, Nuland is highly qualified to instruct in just how accurate the drawings are and how far-sighted were the conclusions for their time. I wish Nuland had offered up some other information: What was the environment of a dissecting laboratory in those days? Has anyone ever investigated the possibility that Leonardo may have been ADHD or entertained some other disorder that affected his organizational skills but which also enabled the compensatory visual and intellectual skills? How exactly did he die? If he was appreciated for his art work in his own time, and known for being well liked, how was his death received? Where is he buried? Stuff like that.
Rating:
Summary: Centuries Ahead of the Curve
Review: The focus of this informative biography is da Vinci the anatomist, not Leonardo the painter or proto-technologist. Indeed, this biography truly comes alive only when Nuland, a surgeon and author, describes the advances Leonardo achieved in his study of the body. In my opinion, Nuland's touch isn't so sure in other areas of Leonardo's achievement and there are, in fact, patches that sound like a product of rushed and unedited dictation. Still, I'd rate this as a superior introduction to a scientist centuries ahead of his time. This fine book, by the way, definitely enriched my experience at the da Vinci exhibit that is now showing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Rating:
Summary: A brief but enjoyable view of a genius
Review: This book does a great job of covering a largely enigmatic life in a short number of pages. Unlike many other authors, Mr. Nuland does not just write his assumptions as fact, but clearly points out where he is making assumptions, the facts he is basing them on, and what other historians think. On top of this, the book is an enjoyable read.
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