Da Vinci Decoded: Discovering the Spiritual Secrets of Leonardo's Seven Principles

""Seven is a powerful, special number,"" writes Gelb, author of the similar book ""How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day."" Here he focuses more on the spiritual than the intellectual creativity of Da Vinci's legacy, encouraging readers to embrace the artist-cum-inventor as their ""personal spiritual adviser."" In the first section, Gelb reviews Da Vinci's life and teachings, answering some of the historical questions raised by Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. But this is not just another knee-jerk rebuttal to the fictional mega-seller, which he regards kindly. Rather, it's a spiritual self-help book that draws from sources ranging from the Dalai Lama and Hasidic rabbis to ""Star Trek"" and the writings and paintings of Leonardo himself. Gelb wants readers to employ seven Da Vinci principles on their quest: they should seek the truth, take responsibility for their search, sharpen awareness, embrace ambiguity and paradox, cultivate balance, nurture integration of the mind and body, and ""practice love."" For Gelb, Da Vinci emerges in these chapters as a hero who exemplifies the 21st-century trends toward religious eclecticism and an individual spirituality that is unbound by creed or dogma. The book is generally strong but sometimes uneven. Sidebars (many of which interrupt and detract from the book's narrative flow) offer tidbits on Da Vinci's resurgent popularity and much-touted sex life, quotations from a sampling of the world's sacred texts and great religious thinkers, and even magazine-style self-assessment checklists and quizzes.