Author Talk: Toby Lester And His New Book, 'Da Vinci’s Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image'

Everybody knows the picture: a man, meticulously rendered by Leonardo da Vinci, standing with arms and legs outstretched in a circle and a square.

The drawing turns up just about everywhere: in books, on coffee cups, on corporate logos, even on spacecraft. It has become the world’s most famous cultural icon – and yet almost nobody knows about the epic intellectual journeys that led to its creation.

Da Vinci’s Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image decodes this famous picture. 

Toby Lester is a contributing editor to and has written extensively for The Atlantic. He is an invited research scholar at Brown University’s John Carter Brown Library. His previous book, The Fourth Part of the World, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Award finalist and was picked as a Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and several other publications.

Event info provided by the Boston Public Library.