Leonardo's Brain: Understanding Da Vinci's Creative Genius

He was the archetypal genius. A painter. A scientist. An inventor. An engineer. Even today, he remains the dictionary definition of a Renaissance man: Leonardo da Vinci. In Leonardo’s Brain, surgeon and best-selling author Leonard Shlain undertakes a hypothetical dissection of the ancient master’s intellect, attributing the roots of his creativity to a particular arrangement of his gray and white matter. . . .Shlain applies modern neuroscience to probe one of history’s most innovative brains and uses da Vinci as a lens through which to view the broader issues of brain organization, creativity, and consciousness. . . . The work stands as the last in a line of probing and entertaining books from a thinker who possessed his own brand of genius. (The Scientist)

Shlain succeeds in keeping Leonardo's Brain accessible and enjoyable. It is intellectual while remaining conversational and is certainly unlike the many, many other books written about da Vinci. (Civil Engineering)

Leonardo’s 500-year-old story continues to compel because, as Shlain writes, 'No other individual in the known history of the human species attained such distinction both in science and art as the hyper-curious, undereducated, illegitimate country boy from Vinci.' (RappNews.com)

The importance of Shlains’s end of life research offers us hopeful foundations that we can build upon in the areas when neurology and psychology meet. Now, not only are we able to study the effects of a stroke with a clearer idea of how to counteract the damage, we understand the differences in basic personality types. (San Francisco Book Review)