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The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance
Fritjof Capra · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorBrunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
Ross King · 193 pages
The superb story of the architect Filippo Brunelleschi and the design and construction of the Great Cathedral in Florence - one of the most magnificent achievements of the Italian Renaissance.Even in an age of soaring skyscrapers and cavernous sports stadiums, the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, with its immense, terracotta-tiled cupola, still retains a rare power to astonish. Yet
The Invention of Air
Steven Johnson · 254 pages
Bestselling author Steven Johnson recounts—in dazzling, multidisciplinary fashion—the story of the brilliant man who embodied the relationship between science, religion, and politics for America’s Founding Fathers. The Invention of Air is a book of world-changing ideas wrapped around a compelling narrative, a story of genius and violence and friendship in the midst of sweeping historical change th
109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos
Jennet Conant · 448 pages
This book captures the drama of 27 perilous months at Los Alamos, a secret city cut off from the rest of society, ringed by barbed wire, where Oppenheimer and his young recruits lived as virtual prisoners of the U.S. government--freshly minted secretaries and worldly scientists contending with living conditions straight out of pioneer days, racing to build the first atomic bomb before Germany coul
Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de' Medici
Miles J. Unger · 384 pages
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World
Jenny Uglow · 608 pages
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot · 381 pages
The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped
Paul Strathern · 456 pages
The Renaissance was a child of many fathers--none more important than the three iconic figures whose intersecting lives provide the basis for this astonishing work of narrative history: Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesar Borgia. Each could not have been more different. They would meet only for a short time in 1502 but the events that transpired, would significantly alter their pe
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick
Mallory O'Meara · 368 pages
The Lady and Her Monsters
Roseanne Montillo · 322 pages
"A ... blend of literary history, lore, and early scientific exploration that traces the origins of the greatest horror story of all time"--Dust jacket flap. Motillo brings to life the fascinating times, startling science, and real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein.
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
David McCullough · 733 pages
This is the inspiring and, until now, untold story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work. Most had never left home, never experienced a different culture. None had any guarantee of success. That they achieved so much for themselves and t
The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles
Martin Gayford · 352 pages
From October to December 1888, Paul Gauguin shared a home in Arles with Vincent van Gogh. This was, without doubt, the most celebrated cohabitation in art history: never, before or since have two such towering artistic talents been penned up in so small a space. They were the Odd Couple of art history. Predictably, the results were explosive. The dénouement of their life together has entered into
The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius who Discovered a New History of the Earth
Alan Cutler · 228 pages
The tale of a seventeenth-century scientist-turned-priest who forever changed our understanding of the Earth and created a new field of science. It was an ancient puzzle: How did the fossils of seashells find their way far inland, sometimes high up into the mountains? Fossils only made sense in a world old enough to form them, and in the seventeenth century, few people could imagine such a thing--
The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution
Keith J. Devlin · 192 pages
From NPR's Math Guy, the story of Leonardo of Pisa, the medieval mathematician who introduced Arabic numbers to the West and helped launch the modern era. In 1202, a young Italian published one of the most influential books of all time, introducing modern arithmetic to Western Europe. Leonardo of Pisa (better known today as Fibonacci) had learned the Hindu-Arabic number system when as a teenager h
Rembrandt's Eyes
Simon Schama · 750 pages
"Rembrandt's Eyes, about which Simon Schama has been thinking for more than twenty years, shows that the true biography of Rembrandt is to be discovered in his pictures. Through a succession of descriptions and interpretations of Rembrandt's paintings threaded into this narrative, he allows us to see Rembrandt's life clearly and to think about it afresh."--BOOK JACKET. "Rembrandt's Eyes shows us
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
Dava Sobel · 192 pages
The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of one man's forty-year obsession to find a solution to the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day--"the longitude problem." Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailo
Prisoner's Dilemma
William Poundstone · 290 pages
Watching players bluff in a poker game inspired John von Neumann--father of the modern computer and one of the sharpest minds of the century--to construct game theory, a mathematical study of conflict and deception. Game theory was embraced at the RAND Corporation, the think tank charged with formulating military strategy for the atomic age, and in 1950 two RAND scientists discovered the "prisoner
Da Vinci's Ghost
Toby Lester · 275 pages
Vitruvian Man is the world's most famous drawing, by one of the world's most famous artists. The image has become visual shorthand for artistic genius and scientific inquiry, and yet nobody knows anything about it. In Da Vinci's Ghost, critically acclaimed historian Toby Lester examines the forces that converged in 1490 to turn an idea that had been around for centuries into this iconic image, bri
The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I
Roger Shattuck · 397 pages
The modernism of our times explained through a study of four significant men.
The Day-Glo Brothers: The True Story of Bob and Joe Switzer's Bright Ideas and Brand-New Colors
Chris Barton
The story of Joe and Bob Switzer who experimented with ultraviolet lights and fluorescent paints and invented a new kind of color called Day-Glo.