Alright, to better put my perspective, I laid the book out in two parts.

Part One: Biography of Leonardo Da Vinci, &
Part Two: Venerating his Anatomic Works

Here's how I felt about each part.

Part One: Oh wow, he's pretty smart, too bad no one really listened to him.
Part Two: MY BOY, WHY! You're SO fucking smart, yet you didn't think to write a SINGLE book for the betterment of mankind?! Why did no one listen to him?! Whyyyy (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)

Overall: Yeah, it's a good book. This is one of the first non-fiction books I've ever read, and I'm very glad that it is. I should give it five stars, but I feel that Part Two drags a bit, and that whole controversy on whether Da Vinci was gay or not kind of comes off as a bit iffy to me. Don't get me wrong, I think the author approached it quite tastefully, but he's a little too confident with his speculations, and a bit invasive. All in all, what wonderful little biography, I certainly found the life of Da Vinci to be worth the read. ( )

Redundant and overly focused on things that I felt were irrelevant. ( )

I knew next to nothing about the subject, and this book served moderately well as a short introduction. Nuland is most excited about our hero as a student of anatomy, which makes sense as Nuland is a medical doctor. There were interesting bits about the process of preserving the anatomy for dissection; we have it so easy now in biology class. ( )

Good but brief look at a fascinating man. I knew he was an artist but I never realized the breadth of his curiosity and his genius. ( )

Thin, short and not particularly compelling. I understand that there isn't much biographical information available, and I think Nuland gave it the old college try, but this just didn't work for me. ( )