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guojing's review
4.0
This was an intriguing little book. That is not a bad thing, other perhaps than the term "little". For while Pasquale Villari's The Life and Times of Machiavelli is something like 1000 pages, this dual biography of Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli, focusing on what seems to be an hypothetical (professional; though the former is generally thought to have been gay and the latter was rather ribald) relationship between the two, with a couple chapters on their project of moving the Arno, both to harm their enemy Pisa, against whom they were at war, and to turn Florence into a port, this being the great time of exploration and adventure in the decades following the explorations of their fellow Italians Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, is only about 200 pages. Oh how much more could be told were it to be expanded threefold!?
If there is one objection which I must raise, and I even told this to the author - having emailed him for the bibliography (the book says it can be found on his website, but it is not there) and seeing his reply, "what did you think of FORTUNE IS A RIVER?" - is the seemingly tenuous leaps made throughout the book to show a continued line of communication between Machiavelli and da Vinci. Several times, something along the lines of Leonardo hasn't been in Florence for awhile, so how else could he have known to write to this person unless Niccolo told him? is said, which, considering the fame of Leonardo in his own time, that he grew up in Florence, and that he surely knew many people, seems to me to be grasping at straws for the sake of the continuity of the book.
However, this singular objection aside, I did greatly enjoy this work. How could I not, when it is about one of the greatest places in history - Florence - during its greatest time in history - the Renaissance - and featuring two of the greatest personages of that place and time? While it is certainly not the most academic of books, it is well-written and enjoyable through-and-through.
If there is one objection which I must raise, and I even told this to the author - having emailed him for the bibliography (the book says it can be found on his website, but it is not there) and seeing his reply, "what did you think of FORTUNE IS A RIVER?" - is the seemingly tenuous leaps made throughout the book to show a continued line of communication between Machiavelli and da Vinci. Several times, something along the lines of Leonardo hasn't been in Florence for awhile, so how else could he have known to write to this person unless Niccolo told him? is said, which, considering the fame of Leonardo in his own time, that he grew up in Florence, and that he surely knew many people, seems to me to be grasping at straws for the sake of the continuity of the book.
However, this singular objection aside, I did greatly enjoy this work. How could I not, when it is about one of the greatest places in history - Florence - during its greatest time in history - the Renaissance - and featuring two of the greatest personages of that place and time? While it is certainly not the most academic of books, it is well-written and enjoyable through-and-through.
outdoorsmanjph's review
slow-paced
1.0
finished the next book about the failure of Da Vinci and Machiavelli to redirect the Arno river to make Florence a coastal trading power while defeatingbtheir rivals at the mouth of the river in Pisa. It’s an interesting study of two geniuses failing together, but the author’s style and use of embedded large images made me dislike the book. The politics of Renaissance Florence is also a dumpster fire of shifting allegiances and intrigue that makes the first two thirds or the Machiavelli sections boring and overloaded witg minor characters.
glpresley's review
4.0
It's actually much more of a minibiography than an accounting of the project. The attempt at moving the river only takes up about half a chapter.
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