Episode Description:
The PBS Books Readers Club Welcomes Renown Historian Walter Isaacson and Guest Sarah Burns, Co-Director/Writer of the new Ken Burns film, LEONARDO da VINCI debuting November on PBS.
He was history’s most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us?
Bestselling author and Professor Walter Isaacson (STEVE JOBS, EINSTEIN, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN) brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this enthralling, comprehensive masterwork that conveys how this Renaissance man unified science and art.
Drawing on thousands of pages from Leonardo’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his work, Isaacson delves into the many facets of the artist’s life and brilliantly captures its essence. A true visionary, and creative across numerous disciplines, Isaacson 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.
Join the PBS Books Readers Club on November 20 at 8:00 pm (ET) as Walter Issacson shares his vision behind this powerful biography and reveals in the novel how his extensive research into this most famous portraitist changed him. “I did learn from Leonardo how a desire to marvel about the world that we encounter each day can make each moment of our lives richer,” reflects Issacson.
The conversation continues from novel to screen, as filmmaker Sarah Burns joins the PBS Books Readers Club to discuss LEONARDO da VINCI a new two-part, four-hour documentary directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon that will air Nov. 18 and 19, at 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS, PBS.org and the PBS App.
Don’t miss the PBS Books Readers Club on November 20 at 8:00 pm (ET) for an intimate portrait of the multifaceted Leonardo da Vinci with award-winning filmmaker Sarah Burns, and esteemed biographer Walter Isaacson.
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The #1 New York Times bestseller from Walter Isaacson brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography that is “a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achieve it…Most important, it is a powerful story of an exhilarating mind and life” (The New Yorker).
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).
Guest Biograpies:
Walter Isaacson
Information coming soon..
Sarah Burns
Information coming soon..
Readers Club Hosts:
