RaveThe Buffalo NewsThe author engages in a certain amount of speculation as to the personal life of the artist, as there are few examples in the notebooks of emotional or inter-personal expression ... This may stretch the limits of pure biography, but the author makes it clear that these are his own projections, fleshing out the dry bones of mere fact. As to the art itself, Isaacson’s treatment is both exhaustive and brilliant. With over 140 illustrations of da Vinci’s works, contemporary paintings and scenes of the time, this biography might well serve as an art-appreciation primer as well as an important addition to the art history literature. Isaacson takes the time to analyze and compare selected works, pointing out often overlooked details, subtleties, weaknesses and strengths. It is a revelation, and one goes back to the illustrations with new eyes ... Perhaps Isaacson’s greatest strengths (purists might say weaknesses) as a biographer are his own imaginative constructs and analytics, derived from data in evidence and brought to instinctive logical conclusions. After all, what can we really know about the actual persona of a man who lived six centuries ago? But the author, combining conversational style and deep scholarship, personalizes Leonardo and his genius in the same way that Leonardo recorded himself - an accumulation of detail to a sort of pointillist image, still mysterious, still elusive - but the best we can do through the veiled lens of time.
Bryan Cranston
RaveThe Buffalo NewsCranston, in his charming matter-of-fact introspection, indirectly makes a case for the total cumulative experience of the actor, the history, as the real persona of a character as it is portrayed ... He has a knack for describing the ordinary in a way that makes it fascinating, without excessive verbiage ... The character dissection [of Walter White] is intense, and Cranston is as intellectually perceptive as he was emotionally complex in the role.
