Bernstein is one of that small set of people who are both scientists and have written for the New Yorker. This books is a collection of essays on scientists. In addition to to more 'regular' ones about Bohr, Einstein, Mach and Turing, there are stories about Edwin Land and Sonya Kowalewsky. The tale of how Tom Lehrer, Harvard math graduate student, actually got his songs to market caught me by surprise. And I had no idea Primo Levi had been in a concentration camp.

This book's focus is more on the people who make science than the actual science itself. It is not a flippant biography or collection of anecdotes by any means, but a solid (well --- as solid as you can be in twenty pages per person) well balanced description of various scientists. The author's science/writing experience allows him to avoid being condescending, bloated or abstruse. More than mere journalism, this book gives a real flavor of the lives of scientists.

Tired of reading popular Cosmology books without getting any deeper insight? If you are armed with the machinary of calculus and some elementary knowledge of differential equations, then this book is your key to really getting intimate with Cosmology!
All important subjects are discussed (except black holes) in Mr. Bernsteins lucid style, in the span of 200 pages. I was particularly satisfied with the description Inflation theory. This is really one of the best sources for the serious student of cosmology. A far more expensive (but equally good) alternative is Barbara Ryden's book with the same title.

This book is a collection of essays written in the style of the New Yorker magazine. Personal aspects of well-known physicists are presented. The book can be a bit dry at times, but some interesting facts are provided on these scientists. Scientists are very human!

This essay collection gathers writings over the past ten years, exploring a range of scientific theories, encounters with scientists, and explanations of how scientific concepts relate to everyday living. The focus on both science and scientists provides a series of lively discussions of how scientific process works.

It's not hard to see why this book is recommended by Morningstar both as one of the best books on stock investing and generally as an investing classic. Siegel successfully makes the case that the stock market is the major driver of successful portfolios--returning about 7 percent after inflation with remarkable consistency over the last 200 years.

But just as striking as his case for stocks as a group is his case against trying to pick individual stocks. The reason Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett are legends is that they are so rare: what they do--consistently picking stocks that substantially outperform the market--is virtually impossible.

Luckily, you don't have to be the next Lynch or Buffett to make money in the stock market. A diversified portfolio of low-cost index funds, using dollar-cost averaging and rebalancing, has a good chance of outperforming most professional money managers on a net basis.

This is the best book I've seen for those who want to know how we know that stocks outperform other investments over long periods. A good brief presentation of the same principles, with specific suggestions on how to implement them, is Bill Schultheis's book The Coffeehouse Investor.

Buy, buy, buy! This is the best book on stocks and financials that I have ever read. History and perspective (which may be lacking in today's market)that is well written in an easy to digest style. With this book you don't need "Beating the Dow with Bonds" - throw it in the trash, stocks are proved winners; "Random Walk Down Wallstreet" - covered, save your money plus here there is some evidence for the 200-day moving average strategy - not so Random; "Contrarian Investment Strategies" - yes, proved to be the way to make money and covered in this book.... plus, did you know GE is the only original DOW stock or that the Russell 2000 are only 11% of the market's cap or the genesis of the Dow Transport? It's all in there and more.

I cannot put into words how valuable this book is to investors and those wanting to learn about investing alike. Whether you've invested your entire life or are curious about it from the recent stock market boom, Dr. Siegel clearly expresses why one must be in the market over the long run and how to do it.

With comprehensive graphs and easy to understand explanations, this book delivers an "all in one" knockout about equities. From international markets to the heated debate of growth versus value stocks, "Stocks for the Long Run" covers the entire spectrum of opportunities that exist for investors.

Readers will also gain an understanding of how monetary policy works in the United States. Wanting to know why the stock market boom has been occurring, why there is widespread misunderstanding about stocks, or the advantages and disadvantages to small caps? All are carefully detailed in this book. Dr. Siegel draws upon a plethora of historical evidence dating back to the early 19th century to make a compelling case for stocks so that people can live their lives instead of worrying about their financial future.

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to reap the huge benefits of the stock market. Dr. Siegel is one of few people who understands how the market works and has the ability as an excellent writer to convey that knowledge. I guarantee you that this will be the best 20 bucks you've ever spent.

The author tells an interesting story about some of the most known german physicist and their role in the attempt to produce an atomic bomb. Unfortunatelly he does not tell the pure facts, he gives his personal interpretation on each comment made by the germans and tries to make you think that they wanted to produce a bomb at any cost, that one of the most famous physicist, Heisenberg, did not know enough nuclear physics and that everything Heisenberg said, was just to hide his failure. A biassed book.

This book consists of expertly annotated transcripts of conversations of German scientists taken at Farm Hall after the end of the WWII in Europe. The book is based on the recently de-classified "Farm Hall Transcripts", a revealing set of informative statements which demonstrates the low level of understanding that the German Scientists had of how to build Atomic Bombs. It is written and annotated by an American physicist, so you get some insights as to Heisenberg's mistakes. The book is a refutation of the book "Heisenberg's War" by Thomas Powers, a revisionist history that claims that Heisenberg, Germany's top scientist, really knew how an Atomic Bomb worked, but withheld this information from his colleagues and the German Government.

Heisenberg remains a mystery. He won a Nobel Prize in Physics in the early 1930s for his "Uncertainty Principle" which deals with Quantum Mechanics. Yet despite his brilliance, he sounds pretty ignorant at Farm Hall. Was he faking? I think not. To paraphrase Watergate: the question still is "What did Werner Heisenberg know and when did he know it? At Farm Hall, when he found out about Hiroshima, his ego deflated like an untied balloon. His comments were made at a vulnerable and candid moment. They reveal a knowledge one would expect from someone you picked at random at a shopping mall.

The Manhattan Project was at least as much engineering as science, and Heisenberg was more of a theologian than a nuts 'n bolts guy.

But hey, don't take my word for it. If you are really interested, I recommend this book along with "Heisenberg's War" so you get both sides. Then read "Alsos" by Samuel Goudschmidt, the scientific leader of the famous Alsos Mission, who along with Col. Boris T. Pash ("The Alsos Mission"), followed the allied armies into France and captured Heisenberg and the others. Goudschmidt was a physicist who offered the earliest (1947) and perhaps the most philosophical postmortem on the German A-bomb "program".

Toward the end of World War II, ten German nuclear physicists were captured by American and British forces and sent to Farm Hall, An English country house near Cambridge for six months. While there they were interrogated about Germany's nuclear research. Farm Hall was a comfortable prison, but it was bugged and their every word was secretly monitored by British agents. Now in a revised and updated second edition, Hitler's Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings At Farm Hall is a complete collection of transcripts made from those secret recordings in 1945. Expertly annotated by Jeremy Bernstein and put in context by Bernstein (and with an informative introduction by David Cassidy). This startling and sobering set of documents provide an insight into the thoughts and feelings of these ten scientists as they considered the destruction of the Third Reich, the failure of their beloved "German Physics", and the roles they played in the Nazi war effort. Hitler's Uranium Club is a unique, informative, invaluable, and at times unsettling contribution to World War II studies.

This is a short biography of Einstein. It is very easy and joyfull to read. It is not very serious biography, it does not go into details, double lined short stories, cover major stages of his life. I recommend to all who wants a brief summary but nice one. I read it in one day, you do not want to drop the book. Very nice.

Usually, I find Biographies long and dull, but this biography of Einstein held my interest. It wasn't too long, and the details it included were quite interesting. I also enjoyed learning about his different proofs and theorms. However, I think the author assumed wrong on one of mysteries of Einstein. Jeremy Bernstein wrote out what he thought was Einstein's proof of the pythagorean theorm, since Einstein never wrote it down. I found a simple error in his mathematics. Besides this, the book is very informative.I would highly reccomend it.

I have read this book four times in three years. The article on Ms Sophia Kowalevsky is very moving and an indicator to posterity that genuinely knowledgable persons get their due recognition even after eons after their death. The article on Primo Levi is a fitting tribute to a man who had Chemistry in his blood. The first article on Einestein during the period 1900-1905 revolves around one man fighting the Scientific community which thought the end of progress of Science. A must read for any lay person. There is a possibility of your getting addicted to the Bernstein's writings. I got addicted and read his new book " A Theory for Everything".

Jeremy Bernstien is an antidote for all the fluffy modern books that attempt to convey concepts in a style that seesm to be mostly entertainment and little content. Bernstien is a practicisng physicist who writes in addition to his teaching and research, rather than a writer who happens to write about science. And having done his apprenticeship under William Shawn at The New Yorker, Bernstein has an elegant, spare style, although he does seem to rely on a few literary devices excessively from time to time.

But no matter. Bernstein not only knows physics, he knows phsyicists as well, and gives us a rare insight into the lives of pivotal figures like Einstein, Mach, Yang, Schroedinger, Levi and others. His piece on Primo Levi, who took up writing after having established himself first as a scientist, and in whose life Bernstein sees parallels with his own, is especially moving and incisive.

Bernstein does perhaps have a bit of an inflated notion of his place in the pantheon of science writers. He states that he created the "scientific profile" with his New Yorker pieces, while I would maintain that his writing, good as it is, is far cry from the medical pieces done by Berton Rouche and certainly the marvelous John McPhee pieces on geology, both of which make Bernstien look a bit mannered and amateurish by comparison. But these are masters- McPhee especially- who have devoted their lives to mastering the craft of writing, and Bernstien is still in the top echelon of those writing about science for the non scientist.

This book attempts to show how statistical mechanics can be applied to cosmology. No other book has done the same thing in such generality starting from first principles. There are mistakes in the book but these are not conceptual. If even a paperback is done the author will correct these mistakes. Trust me. jeremy bernstein

this book bounces from Einstien and philosophy:nuclear research;time;space;intelligent machines;stanley kubric and cosmic flow. All done with wit and humor and style that doesn't let you stop.. you really want to know what zones??what radioactivity? A personal insight into the great scientists and the humananity of the great minds..Robert Oppenheimer,Albert Einstien,a once and future hacker....makes science strange funny and comprehensible..loved it

The book paints an impressionistic picture of AT&T Bell Labs (pre-breakup), as viewed through the stories of several key players in its illustrious history. Written more as a family portrait than a strict history per se, the author successfully captures the flavour and the culture of this remarkable American R & D institution. Having been written in the shadow of the AT&T breakup, there is an undercurrent of concern over changing a proven winner throughout the book. Managers of any R & D organization would do well to read this and see how closely they can emulate this example.