Leonardo Da Vinci

A fascinating read, I'm still in the thick of studying this brick of a book, written by one of the best biographers around. One of the reasons I bought it is the amazing (and amazingly rare) quality of the paper itself (which is necessary for the high number of graphics illustrating the author's thoroughly researched narrative). At least once a day I have to stop and ponder how one could possibly know how and who to ask for the facts that are poured onto his insightful pages. Da Vinci is presented as a brilliant yet flawed human being and product of his era who struggles with his own ingeniousness, because it is also the very thing that -- at least in part -- keeps him from being (if you will) a "productive member of society".