Bistro Bookers

Book title: Leonardo da Vinci 
Author: Walter Isaacson
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Book title: Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
Author: Ross King
Discussed by: Robert Poczik
 

Summary of Leonardo da Vinci  from the publisher:

Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo da Vinci’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson “deftly reveals an intimate Leonardo” (San Francisco Chronicle) in a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo’s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy.

He produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history’s most creative genius.

In the “luminous” (Daily Beast) Leonardo da Vinci, Isaacson describes how Leonardo’s delight at combining diverse passions remains the ultimate recipe for creativity. So, too, does his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. His life should remind us of the importance to be imaginative and, like talented rebels in any era, to think different. Here, da Vinci “comes to life in all his remarkable brilliance and oddity in Walter Isaacson’s ambitious new biography…a vigorous, insightful portrait” (The Washington Post).

Summary of Brunelleschi’s Dome  from the publisher:

On August 19, 1418, a competition concerning Florence’s magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore was announced: “Whoever desires to make any model or design for the vaulting of the main Dome….shall do so before the end of the month of September.”

The proposed dome was regarded far and wide as all but impossible to build: not only would it be enormous, but its original and sacrosanct design shunned the flying buttresses that supported cathedrals all over Europe. The dome would literally need to be erected over thin air.

Of the many plans submitted, one stood out—a daring and unorthodox solution to vaulting what is still the largest dome in the world. It was offered not by a master mason or carpenter, but by a goldsmith and clockmaker named Filippo Brunelleschi, then forty-one, who would dedicate the next twenty-eight years to solving the puzzles of the dome’s construction. In the process, he reinvented the field of architecture.

Brunelleschi’s Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Award-winning, bestselling author Ross King weaves this drama amid a background of the plagues, wars, political feuds, and the intellectual ferments of Renaissance Florence to bring the dome’s creation to life in a fifteenth-century chronicle with twenty-first-century resonance.

Event details

Date and time: Tuesday, June 9 @ 4:00 pm

Venue: Amherst Center for Senior Services (370 John James Audubon Parkway, Amherst, NY 14228)

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You MUST reserve your seat by 3:00 pm on Friday, May 15 for this event by calling 716-636-3051 and providing your name and phone number. If you call to reserve for more than one person, you must provide each person’s name and phone number.

Coming up

Bistro Bookers will be taking July and August off and returning in September.

One of the books for Fall will be How Medicine Works and When It Doesn’t: Learning Who to Trust to Get and Stay Healthy by F. Perry Wilson, MD.

See you at the next review!

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