'Leonardo da Vinci' may be Walter Isaacson's most unusual subject ever
Long before he became a famous biographer, Walter Isaacson cut his professional teeth as a young newspaperman in his native New Orleans, a city known for its vivid eccentrics. Isaacson has been writing about eccentrics ever since, his literary production yielding an aviary of odd birds. His previous books include a biography of Benjamin Franklin, the brilliantly idiosyncratic inventor who also helped create the United States; an account of Albert Einstein, the greatest scientific mind of the 20th century who could not, despite his gifts, keep his
