“Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind. A Biography”, by Charles Nicholl

640 pages, Viking, ISBN-13: 978-0670033454

Sigmund Freud Lives! At least according to Charles Nicholl in his biography Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind. A Biography. While reading this otherwise involved and worthwhile book, Nicholls time and again reinforces his Freudian worldview by inserting various psychoanalytical declarations about how this painting displayed mommy issues or that bridge was the result of a daddy complex. I mean, really: Freud?! Hasn’t that quack’s theories and obsessions been put paid yet? I mean, the damn thing was published in 2004, so it’s not like this is some kind of 1970s pseudo-intellectual dreck here.

Alright, enough of that: for all of the Freudian nonsense, Flights of the Mind is exactly what it purports to be: the biography of the man who, for many people, embodied the Renaissance and all it was meant to be; as such it is a very good historical life, filled with well-sourced details and well, if not profusely, illustrated. It may not, however, appeal to all readers with an interest in Leonardo “The Genius” da Vinci, for while acknowledging that label as well-deserved, Nicholl is more interested in exploring the Leonardo “The Real Man” da Vinci, particularly the artist. For it is evident that Nicholl was definitely most interested in da Vinci as a painter, speculating as he does about the origins, possible models and hidden meanings of Leonardo’s paintings ad nauseam, while giving competent, but relatively brief, treatments of most of Leonardo’s many other accomplishments that didn’t involve a paintbrush. Perhaps as a result, this chronological narrative is almost surprisingly unthematic: aside from some recurrent references to Leonardo’s fascination with flight, the book does not pursue many interpretations of either the man or his work, personal or historical; so, notwithstanding the Flights of the Mind subtitle – and all of those meaningless Freudian speculations – Nicholl concentrates on working through the detailed historical materials. The result arguably is a very sound history of Leonardo, rather than an interpretive biography.

Nicholl commands a diversity of materials, but relies especially on Leonardo’s notebooks, and gives particular attention to many unfinished paintings and sculptures and other uncompleted projects; this, I think, is best, for while it can be difficult teasing through all of Leonardo’s many half-thoughts and squiggly doodles, they provide the best insight into what the man was thinking and when. The level of detail and tracing of personal connections, of value to historians and of interest to those wishing to delve as deeply as possible, may prove a bit much at times for general readers; as the extensive notes to this volume demonstrate, this is a scholarly biography, not a popular short work. This does not mean that Nicholl’s style is dry or academic, as he moves the narrative well across several bite-sized chapters that make the ingestion of all this material easier. But this is not dramatic reading and offers few surprises; although Nicholl does not hesitate to speculate when the evidence is limited or mixed, he does so candidly and with balance, so the reader may accept his opinion or not. In short, Flights of the Mind a great deal more about the life and work of an extraordinary individual, if not necessarily what drove or moved him.

“The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945. Volume Three of the Liberation Trilogy”, by Rick Atkinson

928 pages, Holt Paperbacks, ISBN-13: 978-1250037817

This is the third volume Rick Atkinson’s “Liberation Trilogy”, which is essentially the story of the U.S. Army in the African and European Theater from 1942 to 1945. As should be obvious by now, Atkinson is a superlative writer who can take a wealth of otherwise meaningless statistics and weave those numbers into meaningful prose. What he has also done is written, essentially, an emotional history of the American ground war in Europe; the reader is carried though chapters written to help them feel a literary equivalent to what soldier experienced, as impossible as that ultimately is. The mood of the lead in to D-Day is expectant: there is something at once grand and foreboding about the business of loading into ships, handling the pages of plans and tonnage of materials. The landing and breakout from the beach is something of a shock and is given to us in flashes or recollection and reconstruction; the reader sees pieces of the larger events much as a soldier will have moments of clarity between moment of keeping his head down and hanging on. And so onwards as Atkinson describes the final years of this war with its blood its muck and its suffering, with the everyday experiences of the average soldier being placed side-by-side with the larger strategic discussions of generals and politicians.

The details are extraordinary without ever being overwhelming. For instance, we have a lengthy discussion of losses due to trench foot (caused by the prolonged exposure of feet to damp, unsanitary and cold conditions which caused them to become numb, turn red or blue as a result of poor blood supply, and even the early stages of tissue death) and a shorter one about desertion (reaching as high as 6.3 percent of the armed forces in 1944, and during the American reverses at the Battle of the Bulge the army executed one American soldier, Private Ernie Slovik, for desertion in the face of the enemy as an example to other troops, the last American soldier to be so executed). Some units always seemed to be take the point, the result of which that entire Divisions would suffer 200% casualties – you read that correctly:  200% casualties, in that for every soldier in their per-invasion count, they would need two replacements before the end of the war. Ironically, one of the more moving vignettes in this book involves a German soldier arriving home, so incensed that he grenades a piano before pouring paint over the remains; both this soldier and the reader know that there is more war to come.

There is no white-washing of the angst the allied or the axis leaders felt during the war, while there is candid exploration of the decision-making on both sides. Eisenhower is the hero of the book, if somewhat remote, while Patton is, I think, clearly the authors favorite (that’s not to say that Patton gets a free pass on all his doings). I would have liked to know more about Bradley, but somehow Atkinson does not see him as a big enough personality. Prime Minister Churchill is alternately a drunken figure of fun and a clever statesman, while Roosevelt is the iron-willed leader the Allies needed (a not entirely accurate assessment, I might add, especially to anyone who has read Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts, reviewed by me on February 8, 2019). After completing this trilogy, I came away with an overwhelming sense of sadness about the Second World War, and indeed all wars in general; leaders are human and imperfect, and they make atrocious mistakes – sometimes due to their own personal arrogance, often due to incompetence, but even more often due to ignorance about war and how to fight effectively – all of which results in death and destruction on a large scale. Mr. Atkinson captures all this so very effectively. For me this was an insightful journey into the behind-the-scenes face of WWII.

“The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944. Volume Two of the Liberation Trilogy”, by Rick Atkinson

848 pages, Holt Paperbacks, ISBN-13: 978-0805088618

This is the second volume Rick Atkinson’s “Liberation Trilogy”, which is essentially the story of the U.S. Army in the African and European Theater from 1942 to 1945. Atkinson has a gift for description, evoking a scene, and bringing together details to highlight a situation, writing history the way I would aspire to: so that just about anyone, even with a breadth of previous knowledge of the war or military in general, could pull at least something interesting, and human, out of the narrative. He must have read boxes of letters by individual soldiers, depicting as he does the campaign from the grit, exhaustion, hunger and fear in the trenches to the comforts of Army headquarters and the settings of the great Big Three conferences that debated and then set overall policy. The level of research is as exhaustive as possible and beyond reproach; as a result, even persons knowledgeable about the campaigns and the war in general can learn something new or an interpretation not considered. It was not at all certain the campaign reviewed in this book would occur at all (indeed, many US generals opposed it), and he does not let the generals – all the way up to and including Ike – off easily. Their blundering and slow learning are disheartening to read about, as well as several ghastly operational blunders that led to legendary fratricidal incidents where brave men died needlessly.

What is obvious is that the Allied leadership – Yanks and Brits alike – were a very, very mixed bag; most are regarded by historians as brilliant generals (and there’s no disputing they won the war in the Mediterranean against a fanatically determined enemy) but, damn, at what a price. Especially illuminating are the point-counterpoint disputes, the rivalries and the blunders involving the Allied leadership who ran the war in the Mediterranean theater. Winston Churchill, who pushed for this whole campaign, arguing that after Italy’s official surrender pushing up the peninsula would be relatively easy. Dwight Eisenhower, whose inept strategy for the invasion of Sicily allowed hundreds of thousands of German troops to escape to the mainland and bedevil his soldiers for months to come. Mark Clark, whose paranoia toward the British and desperate need for fame led him to disobey an explicit order and drive his troops to liberate Rome instead of tending to the strategic business of demolishing the German armies in central Italy. George Patton, whose disdain for logistics led his troops to run short of ammunition, his medical corps to lack medicine and bandages, and other vital supplies to languish in North Africa.

As Atkinson notes: “the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again…as they fought across Sicily, and in the coming months as they fought their way back toward a world at peace: that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and the superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.” Would that more leaders learned these terrible lessons.