Monte Johnston

Excellent

Revisado: 06-15-24

I learned so much about the financial system and all forms of currency. A paragon of clarity.

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I really wanted to like it

Revisado: 04-09-22

Te author is a good journalist and has a great ability with metaphors to explain his topic. The problem with the book is that he makes the metaphors do too much and they don’t end up explaining anything.

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I wanted to love it

Revisado: 04-25-18

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I wanted to love this book. Leonardo Da Vinci was an exceptional human is a time of exceptional humans, one that I wanted to learn much more about. I had listened to Alfred Molina before and he does an excellent job narrating this book. But I didn't love it. Why not? you ask.

Waltar Isaacson lays out at the very outset his interest in Da Vinci. He is interested in people who creatively combine artististy and science. This is what drove him to write biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs, all who exhibit this trait. (I really enjoyed his biography of Einstein.) That combination is the lens through which he views Da Vinci's life and work. Again and again he touts some achievement of Da Vinci's as wonder of combining science and art. Clearly, Isaacson feels that our modern age has split the two asunder, and is looking for models for how to fit the two parts of the world, or two parts of our humanity back together. I cannot say that I disagree with him. So what is the problem?

In the introduction, as he is introducing his theme, he relates a conversation he had with a Da Vinci expert to whom he asks the question, whether some accomplishment (I can't remember which) was attributable to his interest in art or science. The expert answers after a pause that Da Vinci would not have made the distinction. Why? Because art, as we know it, and science, as we know it, were just in their infancy in the Renaissance. No one saw them as antithetical to one another. They were both useful paths to truth.

So the really intesting question to answer is how did Da Vinci, and the women and men of his times, view the world, truth, and humanity so that they could be seen as a unified whole, rather than as distinct realms. Surely the Christian worldview that saturated society would play a part, with its belief in the unity of all things as a creation of God, where each creature could point to God in its own way. Isaacson, instead, paints the church as full of fundamentalists and obscurantists, even though many scientists and scholars came from the church. The early modern Europe was alive with intellectual ferment, yet Da Vinci is presented as if he comes from nowhere, and is not really a man of his times. He is presented as the first modern artist, the first modern scientist. But that is not how he viewed himself. What was it about his view of the world that enabled him to pursue art, experiement, measurement, geometry, and any other manner of exploration to find truth? Isaacson shows no interest in the question. He merely repeats again and again that Da Vinci melded the two together, as if it some technique or some discipline to master. So it is not such a surprise that his conclusion to the biography has the air of a self-help book.

So after it all, I got a great survey of Leonardo's sundry interests and incredible talents, but Isaacson was not successful in the task that he set himself, presenting Da Vinci as a guide to how we might view the world as a unity. Pity. This is the first biography of Da Vinci that I have read, so I hope that there is another that has been written that sheds more light on the question.

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Missed the narrative

Revisado: 03-26-15

After reading his novel, "Snow," which I thoroughly enjoyed and would highly recommend, I came to this work with high expectations. The descriptions were wonderful, but with the narrative of a novel, I found my mind wandering. It was all I could do to push through to the end.

John Lee is superb as always.

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Highly recommended

Revisado: 03-16-15

Professor Armstrong does a highly commendable job of covering an enormous range of material coverage so much time and so many cultures in an informative and engaging and personal way.

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Splendid story

Revisado: 03-02-15

Splendid story about East and West, seeking personal happiness versus living by belief and principle, the local versus the cosmopolitan, as well as much beauty and art, love and longing.

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Phenomenal

Revisado: 01-27-15

Prof Greenberg's knowledge and passion are a delight. He is a great storyteller. I want to listen to more of his lectures.

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Such a great balance of the big picture and detail

Revisado: 09-17-13

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This was a marvelous course. Professor Desan has clearly mastered her subject and so her organization and presentation of the material was nothing short of brilliant. She provides an overview of the forces at work during this historical period and illustrates them with wonderful particulars - songs, quotes, diary entries, letters, etc. She gives you a sense of what it felt like to be alive during each of the stages of the Revolution.

I recommend this with no reservations.

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A wasted credit

Revisado: 07-11-13

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

It was clear to me from the description that author had a distinct point of view and possibly even a political bias, all of which I was fine with, in my curiosity about this history of this fine beverage. However, I was quite disappointed that the author cherry-picked facts to fit his view of the world.

He used many pages to root beer consumption in religion, yet he seems not to have gone to much effort to understand the various religions and so distorts them, and thus the role of beer within them. For instance, he claims that because Jesus used wine (which he really suspects to have been beer, despite the complete lack of similarity with blood) at the Last Supper, that he was claiming that beer was somehow sacred or holy -- a claim that no major Christian tradition claims. Moreover, he reports that the disciples were drunk at Pentecost, when the point of the story is exactly opposite.

The book is filled with so many misrepresentations and errors, I finally had to abandon it.

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Amazingly accessible

Revisado: 03-12-12

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Absolutely. I had thought the Smith had anticipated much of our current understanding of the way markets function. Instead, he had all of the fundamentals figured out. I was fearing that it would be quite obscure in topic and language, but found it pleasantly accessible, if perhaps a bit long.

As as reading the classics, I would definitely recommend this.

Who was your favorite character and why?

The market.

What about Gildart Jackson???s performance did you like?

It fit the material.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

The Way Your World Works

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