He was history’s most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us?

Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo da Vinci's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves 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. But in his own mind, he was just as much a man of science and technology. 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.

His creativity, like that of other great innovators, came from having wide-ranging passions. He peeled flesh off the faces of cadavers, drew the muscles that move the lips, and then painted history’s most memorable smile. He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. Isaacson also describes how Leonardo’s lifelong enthusiasm for staging theatrical productions informed his paintings and inventions.

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 of instilling, both in 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.

Come take a stroll down the memory lane of medical history. "Reflections on Pediatric Medicine from 1943 to 2010" recounts the struggles of a dedicated pediatrician as he attempts to strike a balance between a normal family life and the demands of the rapidly evolving world of modern medicine. Through vividly drawn stories compiled from a career that spans more than half a century, author Byron Oberst takes readers on an amazing journey from the early years of medicine, when there were few specific therapies with which to treat patients, to the wonders of today. From the eradication of the scourge of polio to the miracle of antibiotics to the era of organ transplantation and body imaging, Oberst offers a rare chance to experience medical progress and discovery as it happens. Written in eight parts, each spanning a unique decade, "Reflections on Pediatric Medicine from 1943 to 2010" is an unforgettable trip down memory lane-with many interesting side excursions.

Denis Nkala was a young management trainee, fresh out of graduate school and newly returned to his home country of Zimbabwe, when he met Fidelia aboard a staff bus on his way to the hospital to visit his mother. Her kindness and genuine concern for the plight of a stranger touched him, and their friendship blossomed quickly. Before long, her easy smile and air of dignity carved their way deep into his heart. When they joined their lives together in marriage, they had no idea of the difficult trials they would be called upon to face. Fidelia, with her husband always by her side, battled various cancers in an effort to live long enough to see their children grow. Now Denis writes to communicate the courage, love, and faith that she held throughout her struggle. This touching true story details the life of a wife and mother as she battles an aggressive, mutative cancer. Told from the perspective of her husband, who was her diligent caregiver throughout her twelve-year battle, this narrative encompasses the gravity and pain of a long fight with cancer as well as the suffering and dedication of those who supported the fight.

Nikola Tesla was one of the 20th century's great pioneers; his role in advancing electrical energy through the use of alternating current, and his stupendous engineering finesse, make this biography by journalist John J. O'Neill a fine read. Born in a Serbian village to a religious family, Nikola demonstrated an early interest in physics. The nascent science behind electricity - in the 1870s a mysterious, unharnessed force - became his passion. Though the young man's engineering aspirations were almost derailed when he contracted cholera, and later by Austro-Hungarian conscription, Tesla managed to enrol to study in Graz, Austria. A top-class student, tutors admiration for Tesla's gifts and boundless curiosity was tempered by concerns over his tendency to overwork. These attributes marked Tesla's professional life; an obsessively driven man, Tesla's gifts for invention were amply demonstrated and rewarded in the United States. As his ambitions grew in size and scope, Tesla was hailed as a visionary.

"Whoever Saves a Life, It Is Considered as If He Saved an Entire World"

Dr. Rick Hodes arrived in Africa more than two decades ago to help the victims of a famine, but he never expected to call this extremely poor continent his home. Twenty-eight years later, he is still there.

This Is a Soul tells the remarkable story of Rick Hodes's journey from suburban America to Mother Teresa's clinic in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As a boy, Rick was devoted to helping those in need, and eventually he determined that becoming a doctor would allow him to do the most good. When he heard about famine in Africa, that's where he went, and when genocide convulsed Rwanda, he went into the refugee camps to minister to the victims. When he was told that Ethiopia was allowing its Jews to emigrate to Israel, he went to help. While there, he was drawn to Mother Teresa's mission in Addis Ababa. It was there that Rick found his calling when he began caring for the sickest children in one of the world's poorest countries. But he did more than that--he began taking them into his home and officially adopted five of them.

This Is a Soul is also a book filled with great joy and triumph. When Rick's kids return from surgery or life-saving treatments, he is exultant. "Seeing these people after surgery is like going to heaven," he says.

Marilyn Berger went to Africa to write about Dr. Hodes, but while there, she became involved with the story. When she came upon a small, deformed, and malnourished boy begging on the street, she recognized immediately that he had the exact disease Rick could cure. She took him to Rick, who eventually arranged for the boy to have a complicated and risky surgery, which turned out to be incredibly successful. The boy's story--intertwined with Rick's, and Marilyn's as well--is unforgettable in its pathos and subtle humor.

This Is a Soul is not just a story of the savior and the saved, it is a celebration of love and wisdom, and an exploration of how charity and devotion can actually change lives in an overcrowded, unjust, and often harsh world.

The pioneering and creative brain surgeon recounts the course of his eventful life and career, detailing the drama and tensions of his endeavors, discoveries, and breakthroughs in neurology, neurophysiology, and neurosurgery

Paul Zoll MD is an engaging account of the life and work of Dr. Paul M. Zoll, the physician and medical researcher behind the treatments and techniques we use today to save victims of heart attacks and to prevent premature deaths from other forms of heart failure. The book tells how one man's compassion, insight, intelligence and perseverance solved medical mysteries that had plagued people through the ages. The biography also shows the human dimensions of Dr. Zoll, including his childhood, education, military service, family relationships, recreational interests and social associations throughout his life, from 1911 to 1999. But the book's primary topic is Dr. Zoll's contributions to medicine, especially his breakthroughs in cardiac care and his development of closed-chest pacemakers and defibrillators, implantable pacemakers and heart monitors. The biography positions Zoll as a leading pioneer in cardiac care, whose innovations and ideas changed the field. Through carefully documented historical analysis, the book shows how Dr. Zoll was the creator and the first physician to successfully employ devices that are the fore bearers of life-saving implements commonly used today. The author, Dr. Stafford I. Cohen, was a medical resident under Dr. Zoll and, later, a colleague at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. His book is the first full-length biography of Dr. Zoll. It strives for historical accuracy and gives a fair and balanced assessment of Zoll's life and work. Paul Zoll MD firmly establish Paul M. Zoll as a first-in-the-world innovator whose treatments and inventions make him the father of modern electrocardiac therapy - a man to whom we owe a great deal today.

Soon to be a major motion picture, the story of one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled, between a young unschooled Indian prodigy and a great English mathematician.

In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G H Hardy, begging the preeminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Realizing the letter was the work of a genius, Hardy arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled. With a passion for rich and evocative detail, Robert Kanigel takes us from the temples and slums of Madras to the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, where the devout Hindu Ramanujan, "the Prince of Intuition," tested his brilliant theories alongside the sophisticated and eccentric Hardy, "the Apostle of Proof." In time, Ramanujan's creative intensity took its toll: he died at the age of thirty-two and left behind a magical and inspired legacy that is still being plumbed for its secrets today.

In response to the stifling socialism of the Canadian health care system and the intolerably long Canadian winters, Dr. Mel Genraich made a life-altering decision: leave Toronto for good, and seek his fortune in Houston, Texas. Little did he know that in the short space of eight years, he would be divorced from his wife and children, remarried to a native Texan (from a staunch Church of Christ family, no less), and would relocate his practice to the Texas Panhandle. "Take Two Aspirins, but Don't Call Me in the Morning" depicts the travels and struggles of a Canadian Jew living in an almost one-hundred percent Christian world. Genraich tells of his incredible swings of fortune and adaptation to events that change the course of his life. He chronicles his travels in America and abroad-in particular, his transformational journey through Europe as a senior medical student. Brutally honest and sprinkled with his personal observations, Genraich shows that he is not afraid to be honest and controversial, traits that most in his profession decry. This is a memoir that is frank and engaging, far removed from the private enclave of the medical world and yet also a story of that world.