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Why we think it’s a great listen: You thought he was a stodgy scientist with funny hair, but Isaacson and Hermann reveal an eloquent, intense, and selfless human being who not only shaped science with his theories, but politics and world events in the 20th century as well. Based on the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos.
Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?
Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Chernow sows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency.
Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
By the time Henry Kissinger was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to a Gallup poll, the most admired person in America and one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world’s imagination. Yet Kissinger was also reviled by large segments of the American public, ranging from liberal intellectuals to conservative activists. Kissinger explores the relationship between this complex man's personality and the foreign policy he pursued.
Why we think it’s a great listen: You thought he was a stodgy scientist with funny hair, but Isaacson and Hermann reveal an eloquent, intense, and selfless human being who not only shaped science with his theories, but politics and world events in the 20th century as well. Based on the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos.
Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?
Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Chernow sows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency.
Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
By the time Henry Kissinger was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to a Gallup poll, the most admired person in America and one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world’s imagination. Yet Kissinger was also reviled by large segments of the American public, ranging from liberal intellectuals to conservative activists. Kissinger explores the relationship between this complex man's personality and the foreign policy he pursued.
What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There's no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson. But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in digestible chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.
In his audiobook, A Higher Loyalty, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of powe, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.
Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci (2017) is a biography of the Italian Renaissance artist, researcher, and inventor. Isaacson traces Leonardo's life and scientific pursuits and provides history and criticism for each of his important works.... Listen to this in-depth analysis to learn more.
Ron Chernow, whom the New York Times called "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades", now brings to startling life the man who was arguably the most important figure in American history, who never attained the presidency, but who had a far more lasting impact than many who did.
Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world’s richest man by creating America’s most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.
In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.
The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization.
In Washington: A Life celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. This crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president.
In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley's most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs - a real-life Tony Stark - and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new makers.
What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson's answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research. Humorous, surprising, and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
In just a decade and a half, Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded Alibaba and built it into one of the world's largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba's $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs and presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China's booming private sector.
The author of the acclaimed best sellers Benjamin Franklin, Einstein, and Steve Jobs delivers an engrossing biography of Leonardo da Vinci, the world's most creative genius.
Leonardo da Vinci created the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and engineering. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. 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.
Now Walter Isaacson brings Leonardo da Vinci to life, showing why we have much to learn from him. His combination of science, art, technology, and imagination remains an enduring recipe for creativity. So, too, was his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. His relentless curiosity should remind us of the importance of instilling, in both ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it - to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different.
Alfred Molina gives a good performance, but you wouldn't know it if you were to buy this based on the audio sample. This is something I often check before buying, luckily I recognized Isaacson's funny voice and assumed it was a section of the preface.
The samples should give an overall impression of the narrator, not the author or other contributor in a preface.
79 of 81 people found this review helpful
Isaacson is a master, and does it again, succinctly conveying what made Leonardo such a change force in human history. I have to defend narrator Alfred Molina, as I saw one review that said the listener didn't care for his narration - I found him thoroughly enjoyable and made this an easy listen.
As most of us do, if I don't know the narrator I listen to the sample to see if I can stand the narrator, and will skip the audiobook if I don't care for the narrator. With this book, the audio sample is Isaacson reading the introduction, at least for the first few minutes I listened. It would be better if the sample used was Molina, as we could judge for ourselves. As with art, each narrator is a personal preference.
83 of 87 people found this review helpful
Alfred Molina, the reader, is a reasonably well-known actor (Chocolat, etc). Born in London, his mother was Italian and his father, Spanish. He speaks both languages. So, if you appreciate good pronunciation of Italian words, you won’t be disappointed!
50 of 53 people found this review helpful
Leonardo da Vinci, By: Walter Isaacson, and Narrated by: Alfred Molina. This is more akin to a Great Course, a study of Leonardo's works, rather than story about his inner self. The book tells us what he produced, not why he was moved to make those production. The narrative told here is a listing of what made the man, the serendipity of his life, and how he undertook to play out his gifts. That is not to say this was not a very easy to listen to and informative reading; it was a worthwhile read. The book does not unravel some mysterious being but rather provides analysis of the product of an artist and engineer and one of the most intriguing beings ever to leave traces of himself on the face of this earth.
Perhaps another way of describing the nature of the book is to explain it is the study of one man’s genius, his versatility and his inability to produce product. Yes, that is right. Lack of finished product. This book is about the intellect of Leonardo. It is also the story of his failure to paint more or finish what he started or when it came to his scientific studies document any finding for publication. Rather we are now committed to his notes which he created for his own inquisitive urges. Leonardo was void of the need to provide the fruit of his genius to mankind. He focused only on his own narcissistic enjoyment. Not to progress mankind.
All in all, a really good place to spend your reading time. If you are inquisitive about genius or want to know why this man was a magnificent artist, this work by Isaacson will get you there and get you there in luxury. The reading was perfect.
41 of 44 people found this review helpful
Good book and good reader. I can do without the affectation of saying “Leonardo” with a fake Italian accent throughout the book. Also, the constant referrals to photos on a pdf is frustrating. Couldn’t Audible make this pdf available online so that listeners can refer to it?
41 of 45 people found this review helpful
Wonderful book, wonderful narration. The joy Isaacson has for his subject permeates the book. Alfred Molina is a fantastic narrator. The pdf is essential.
69 of 77 people found this review helpful
You may have thought you knew all about Leonardo, but this book will cause you to reconsider. A wonderful review of the life and times. If you liked the author's bio of Steve Jobs, you'll love this one too. It will make you think about how you relate to your own creativity.
14 of 15 people found this review helpful
I’m not a fan of biographies. I find the very drab. However THIS is perhaps the only one of read/listened too and enjoyed.
Davinci is a fascinating person and his life is great to learn about even through TV documentaries but something about great prose that makes it better.
The way it’s written almost feels like a normal book book. It puts you there and you go along with Davinci and his life.
The only negative about this is that it NEEDS the Digital or physical version a little bit. It mentions often lots of paintings and drawings throughout the book (see figure 1,2 etc.) and kind of breaks the listening experience now and again. You could always just google this image or that image as well.
All in all it’s a good listen. Not sure if I will listen to it again or at least for some time after but that’s just me.
21 of 23 people found this review helpful
Okay, da Vinci is fascinating. While it was a very long listen it never sagged.
Two minor complaints: one, you really miss out by not being able to look at the pictures that Isaacson is describing. Yes, you can download the pdf of the pix but I listen to books in my car which makes that problematic.
Two, I didn't really enjoy Molina's performance. This is going to seem odd but his enunciation and performance just stood out too much.
11 of 12 people found this review helpful
My rating is only three stars because 75% of the book is about his art, in excruciating detail. The title Leonardo DaVinci, the man and his art is more fitting.
17 of 19 people found this review helpful