To think that, quite possibly the worlds greatest mind, was delivered to the world in such a wonderfully absurd package is truly fantastic. This book is a great way to introduce yourself to the personal points of view of one of the worlds truly great men. A collection of insights and observations, which were more often than not, a surprise.

I think Einstein is the most fabulous man of all times, and his personality always continues to baffle me. He is anything but predictable, and if you think he is the very dry, overly technical, personification of a science nerd and crazy genius, you are WRONG.

Get to know Al personally with this book; I promise you won't have any regrets. I admire Einstein wholeheartedly, and I have been an Einstein enthusiast since 1990. When other teens' rooms were plastered with posters of cute furry kitty cats and teen heartthrobs, my room was plastered with photos and posters of Einstein. Not because I was, by any means, the nerdy science-type or an astrophysics enthusiast, but merely because "to know Albert Einstein is to love him." He has a great personality, and it is my sincere hope that the world will come to know as the goofy guy he really was.

It also serves to remind me of the great men and women who were tragically lost in the Holocaust. Where would this world be had Albert Einstein died in a concentration camp? We must never forget.

In summary, my favorite Einstein quote... "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." Viva Einstein!!

The quickest and best way I've found to counter those who say, "I think Einstein said...". Full of insights into the mind of good ol' Albert.

The book starts with an interesting and simple overview on Mechanics and Electromagnetism. The basic concepts of SR are presented, like Lorentz Transformations, space contraction, time dilatation, velocities addiction and the well known "E = mc2". It ends with a small introduction to GR.

The notation is not quite usual, so don't be surprised to read "K = mb" for the usual "F = ma". Anyway, read it if you are young (I read it right after my "Sweet Sixteen") or if you want reduced knowledge of the matter.

This little book is a complete delight; if you can only take one physics book to bed with you at night, this might be it. Born reviews much of classical mechanics and E&M, and gives a great introduction to special relativity. There is a bit more on the history of ether than I really wanted to see, but that aside, this a wonderful, comprehensive, handy (not big and heavy) and inexpensive book. I highly recommend it.

At times notation can be a distraction, at other times notation can cause confusion, as in E&M most notably. Max Born's book is a gem and if you can get around the mild distractions and focus on the ideas then you may even get around the paradoxes in Relatively, where "common sense" is a distraction.
Some gifted people can write and explain well the most complex ideas some cannot. Max Born succeeds one of the best popular books on Relativity.

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After studying a large number of published and unpublished letters for a decade, Dennis Overbye, the author of another well-written book "Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos," successfully portrayed young Albert Einstein from the two sides of his personal life and scientific endeavor. In "Einstein in Love" Albert is depicted vividly as a lad who loved his former physics classmate Mileva and constantly tackled the most profound problems of physics. The author also writes in detail about the social and scientific backgrounds of the time and views of the places Albert lived in. Albert's marriage with Mileva comes to an unhappy ending. Then he marries his cousin Elsa. Albert's dark side during the years of these events does not elude Overbye's polished writing. In the section about Albert's relation to the physicist Hendrik Lorentz, the author writes, "Albert was the eternal outsider"; and at another place, "When it came to women he could be like a child." These words cogently summarize the human side of the scientific giant.

A reviewer who is an expert in physics (A. J. Kox for "Physics Today") has criticized that Overbye's discussion of science is not always accurate. The present reviewer thinks that if the description of physics were made more compact, this book would have been much more absorbing. Inclusion of a chronological table might have been a good idea. It is a little disappointing that the source of citation is often of secondary nature; for example, "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" is cited many times. However, these are only minor defects. This is a laboriously and skillfully written book to be read by all those who love passion and science and revere "Time" magazine's Man of the Century.

The first comment that comes to mind about Einstein in Love is that Overbye can really write well; I find the prose to be much more enjoyable than that of any other Einstein book I am aware of. Overbye also does a good job of at least attempting to explain relativity to a lay reader, while also not ignoring the other important works of the young Einstein on Brownian motion, gravity, etc. I do find the title more than a little misleading, though - Einstein's marriages to Mileva and Elsa and his dalliances with others seem to have little connection at all with the progress of his scientific thought. I suspect that the title is little more than a device to capture attention and sell books. I also find it odd that the book just seems to end for no apparent reason around the time of his divorce from Mileva. Still, if you want a good read about a true genius and his early life and works, this is one of the better places to turn - just don't expect much "scientific romance," except for the beauty pouring out of Einstein's head.

In this book Overbye has adroitly blended Einstein's often-difficult personal relationships with the discoveries that made him the most celebrated scientist in a century during which there was no shortage of brilliant scientific minds. All in all, I found it one of the most engagingly-written and informative histories of science I've ever encountered.

One cannot read this work without wondering how the author was able to lay his hands on, and then digest, that mountain of material -- epistolary, journalistic, and geographic. It would appear that he read hundreds and hundreds of letters and visited every locale of importance to Einstein in the first four decades of his life.

I would recommend this book for anyone with an interest in knowing how scientific progress happens. Overbye's thoughfully-constructed and lucid explanations should, moreover, prove of particular value to those whose previous exposure to physics has left them with the desire for a fuller understanding of some of its more complex principles.

For me, not least among this work's plusses was that it attached names that had been little more than textbook entries -- Planck's constant, Wien's law, Bohr atom, Born-Haber cycle, and many others -- to real people. Einstein's universe did, after all, include real people.

This book is a very good *scientific* biography of Einstein. This is both its strength and weakness. It is a strength because the author is clearly very knowledgeable about the subject, and therefore I couldn't think of a better book than this one. However, to appreciate the ins and outs of the scientific work of Einstein, you need to be a scientist yourself, or at least be very interested in the subject, because Pais does not avoid technical discussions. Not at all.

Therefore, for people without knowledge on this level, the book is not so accessible (I think), which may lead to disappointments. However, for this group of readers there is also good news: the author has organized the book into two interwoven 'sections': a part that is purely biographical and contains no technical discussions, and a technical part. The two parts are easily recognizable in the table of contents. This makes the book interesting and useful for a broad public.

Summarizing: this high quality book makes no light reading, but it is worth the effort, and the money.

that is what Einstein had to say, when in 1921 he was confronted with rumours that a non-zero aether drift had been discovered by Dayton Miller, a one-time junior of Albert Michaelson. When asked what he meant by this, he remarked "Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse". He is also said to have opined that he had "not for a moment taken [Miller's results] seriously". That was the kind of faith that Albert Einstein had in the laws of Nature that he discovered...a deep faith not capable of rational foundation..

Albert Einstein...the man...the philosopher...the scientist...the physicist...the humanist...the legend...so much has already been written about this one extraordinary human being, that you can be forgiven for grimacing when you see this book and thinking, 'oh, no ! not another one in this never-ending craze'...but think again...this is THE definitive scientific biography of Herr Professor Einstein, coming as it is from a physicist who was close to this great man towards the end of his life. Abraham Pais does a superb job of presenting the state of physics before Einstein, how he changed that and how it has evolved since his times. Science was Einstein's life, his devotion, his refuge, and his source of detachment...Science was his religion...In order to understand the man, then, it is necessary to follow his scientific ways of thinking and doing...and that is what the book precisely does...

One more thing...this is not a layman's book...if you have only a little idea of physics, and are averse to mathematical details, then look elsewhere...this is not for you...but if you have that 'holy curiosity' and 'wonderment of the spectacle that is science', with loads of perseverance, this book does an excellent job of satisfying that quest...it can inspire you to seek greater heights of understanding...(there are tons of references to other more detailed texts)...in the end, you will have had but just a glimpse of Einstein's oeuvre. Thank you.

Pais's book is the best scientific biography of Einstein to date. The author, as an eminent particle physicist turned historian, has the ability to understand and portray Einstein's work as few others could. Foelsing's biography is better for depicting Einstein's "life and times", and the scientific milieu in which Einstein came to maturity.

I chose this book because one day I had nothing to do so I went to the library and saw this book. The book was about Albert Einstein. I thought about some things about him, but didn't really find something important about him so that made me want to read this book. I wanted to know how his life was and how did he become so smart. I learned many new things in the book about Albert Einstein. The book was really easy to understand and had some pictures of him doing things.
I recommend this book to anybody who wants to learn more about Albert Einstein. There are many surprising things in this book. One thing was that when Albert was taking his first violin lessons he flung a chair at his teacher. His parents quickly hired another teacher. When Albert was little his parents complained that he was too heavy and also that his head was too large and square shaped. They worried that their son was going to become retarded, but they were wrong. At the age of twelve Albert was really interested in math so he asked a medical student named Max Tameley to lend him some books on math. By the age of thirteen Albert was already past the level of Tameley's.
My favorite part of the story was when Albert Einstein was about at the age of six and taking his first violin lesson. He got mad and all of a sudden through a chair at the chair. I never knew that Albert had a really bad temper when he was a little kid. I always thought that he was a nice little young boy who liked to study and work. The book also says that whenever his sister, Maja, saw that Albert's face was pale she would run away and find cover because she knew that he would throw things. Once Albert almost hit her with a bowling ball and once he did hit her with the handle bar of a hose.

john severance is a good nonfiction writer besides this book he has wroght books like gandhi:great soul,artist and thomas jeforson.Most people in the world know the name albert einstein and the famous E=MC2, but the theory of relativity and his life in general is on known of but with this book will help you under stand it a bit better,did you know he won the nobel prize well he did for physics.

Einstein was not just a famous scientist. As this book reveals, he was also a profound and well-written author. The essays in this collection are enlightening, easily understood, and brief but to the point. I would recommend this book to everyone.

I bought this book in my early twenties still unsure of what to do with my life but at least certain of the fundamentals and morals with which one should follow. Einsteins prose on life, morality, religion, science, personalities are words which echo the wisdom of many years and the experiences which have shaped them. Now, 7 years later, I pick up this book, and am reminded of a man who knew that the future is uncertain, but with the the search for truth and compassion, it could be a great place.

This book is a great read - I admire how a man who's thoughts were so complicated, yet simple at the same time. He did not forget where he came from , nor forgot that which is truly significant. And that which drives humanity is not in the theories of relativity, but in our simple acts of humanity.

This book encompasses an era of 1934 - 1950, yet its prose is timeless - even now! Occum's razor wuld be proud.

An easy and maths free introduction to the world of A.E. However, some of the more silly and irrelevant cartoons might distract the reader.

All in all, not a bad introduction to A.E. (In fact a damn good place to start discovering relativity). My grouse is that it does not cover all of A.E.'s works. The treatment of relativity touches the tip of the ice-berg only, so to speak.

Still, it really makes you want to read more about A.E.'s works, at least for this reader.

This book is about the Theory of Relativity and a bit about how it was developed. The author done a wonderful job in teaching it in a very easy way and also showing the details of the theory (not being only superficial), like equations etc. You see, the deduction of the equations he done in a great way that everyone can easily understand (it's not like the appendix in the Einstein's book about relativity which I never understood). Of course this "deduction" is not formal, but it helps a lot to understand how it works and how they got to the theory.

Einstein for Beginners acts more as a visual representation of Einsteins work. An easy to read format for anyone interested in knowing Einsteins theories without the mind-boggling formulas. I would suggest this as a place to begin. A nice read, although the theories one still needs to comprehend. The author, Joseph Schwartz puts it in a perspective that both challenges and educates. Highly reccomended!

What are bits of German battleship doing on the moon? How are Rutherford, Faraday, Cassini and Lavoisier connected with Einstein and the world's most famous equation?

David Bodanis takes a picture of the equation and the people who form it's ancestors, brilliantly takes us through the lives and discoveries of the people and ideas that eventually joined together on the page in front of Einstein and beyond.

The simplicity of E=mc2 itself belies the depth human emotion and fundamental impact five little characters have had on world we think we know today. David shows us how the equation is not an abstract scientific concept, but has unleased far reaching changes within society.

David's writing is relaxed and highly re-readable; he is also an articulate interviewee with a refreshing, amused outlook. (I found out about this book hearing a radio interview with him.)

As the first of his books I've read, I'll be keeping an eye out for his others.

This is a very good book. The first five chapters give the history behind each individual sign of Einstein's famous equation, including the = and the ^2. The remainder of the book details the history of the equation as a whole--how it was conceived, how it evolved and how it has been applied to modern technology. Obviously, there is a chapter on Einstein. But some of the most enjoyable sections deal with lesser known figures like Cecilia Payne, who discovered that the sun is composed primarily of Hydrogen rather than Iron, and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who first realized that massive stars will eventually shrink to become black holes.

Bodanis' writing style is very easy to understand; he doesn't resort to technical jargon or unnecessary wordiness anywhere in the book, nor does he confuse the reader with long, mathematical explanations. Unfortunately, as a byproduct of this all-encompassing simplification, some of the more advanced topics he covers are never fully elucidated. Rather than answering all the "why" questions, Bodanis focuses on answering the "what" ones. He accomplishes this goal wonderfully.

If you are hoping to be enlightened to why general relativity is true, you will have to accept that you can't get there by reading a 219-page book (the remainder of the book consists of an appendix, notes and a guide to further reading). Instead, try tackling a college physics textbook or, better yet, several of them. However, E=mc^2 is a terrific book for those who are just interested in what the equation means, how it was discovered and how it relates to our universe. It's also a great reference to use if you're studying Einstein or the effects of science and technology on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Kudos to David Bodanis. I averaged a chapter or two a day with this book, and I enjoyed every one.

A lucid, interesting, and concise explanation of Einstein's famous equation.

The biography of an idea: a wonderful approach to a fascinating and important topic. The idea is Einstein's famous equation: E = mc2. The equation expresses a fundamental principle of the universe (as presently constituted). The principle existed long before Einstein discovered it -- or had the idea. This book is an intellectual history of how the idea was born with emphasis on the people involved and how events in their lives contributed to the culmination of the concept and its application to our twentieth century world and future of the universe.

A remarkably fast read for a book about a scientific subject, which attests to the author's skill in reducing a technical subject to an easily understood narrative of historical and cultural events as they impacted on the discovery that energy is matter and matter is energy. This is not The Theory of Relativity For Dummies; the work is very rich in historical, political, and cultural perspective and is exceptionally resourceful in its endnotes and appendix. In spite of its usefulness as a text, it is not technical and can be understood without any background in astrophysics or math. While not for children, I would highly recommend it as a very worthwhile introductory book and motivating challenge for precocious ones with a fascination about space and astronomy.

I agree with Amanda's review below -- this book is not the book that "Brief History of Time" was, and it is very nearly incomprehensible. Often, physics books for laypeople succeed in conveying, at some level, a qualitative sense for the main conclusions of the mathematics, but lack the detail required to fully appreciate the point or to see how related points interconnect. This book fails even to achieve that -- the text is truncated to the point that it conveys little or nothing. The examples given are too abstract to convey any inuitive point. For instance, nobody who doesn't already understand it can hope to pick up even a vague idea of what imaginary time is from reading this book -- a concept that is key to understanding the description of the universe Hawking purports to undertake. The positive part of the book is that it covers -- at least mentions -- in a broad brush manner the very latest in thinking about the structure of the universe and GUT theory, but concepts are mentioned so briefly and cryptically that little understanding is likely to result.

I would commend Mr. Hawking to Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe," which, while not perfect, is a superb attempt to explain superstring theory (much of the same territory Mr. Hawking covers here) in lay terms. Mr. Greene's book feels like it was written by a good writer and a good teacher who didn't let his editor's leash out too far. Mr. Hawking's book, by comparison, reads like book flap copy.

Following up on his Brief History of Time, Hawking here gives a brief (200 or so pages) glimpse into the current state of cosmology. Given that it has a lot of illustrations, this book may have just over 100 pages of actual text.

The concepts described in this book can be rather heady, so it is not surprising that sometimes the reading gets a little tough. Hawking does, however, simplify the concepts enough so you can at least get a good idea of what is being described. But ideas like string theory, even at their simplest, are not easy to grasp.

The book's greatest strength, however, is also its greatest weakness: the illustrations. Many are useful, but others do nothing more than look interesting...they don't illustrate anything. In addition, the brevity of the book leaves me demanding more.

For these reasons, I cannot give it the full five stars. As an introduction, this book is fine, but for anything more, you need to go elsewhere. I actually suggest The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene

This is the long-awaited follow-up to "A Brief History of Time". It's quite amazing how some of the ideas around the Physics of the very large and very small have developed in recent years, and Stephen Hawking is determined to communicate them to us.

He realises that this requires diagrams and analogies, since the mathematics is getting ever more forbidding. As a result, unlike a lot of books on modern Physics and cosmology, this one focuses on pictures and spatial representations. It's beautifully illustrated throughout, almost a coffee-table book. That said, Hawking hasn't neglected the text either - it's clear, concise and frequently humourous.

The book starts with the key ideas developed in the earlier part of the 20th century, Relativity and Quantum Theory, but in the context of more recent experiments and observations, which makes it feel more contemporary than more historical accounts. The second chapter explains how these developed through to the 1980s, summarising the various attempts at unified "Theories of Everything". The book's central chapter investigates what we now know about how the Universe formed and developed, presenting a lot of quite new findings and concepts.

After this, the going starts to get harder, introducing concepts like time travel through black holes, and the physics of the strangely-named "p-branes". You may need to read these several times, and understanding is by no means guaranteed, but Hawking rightly focuses on the key implications rather than the models themselves.

The penultimate chapter is a bit of a non-sequiteur, looking at the evolution of human and artificial intelligence. It's a fascinating subject, well described and clearly of great interest to Hawking, but doesn't quite fit with the rest of the book. Finally, the book presents some of the most recent ideas of unified theories - branes again - and makes some sense of why such strange mathematical models are needed.

I enjoyed this book, but I wouldn't pretend to have understood it all on a first reading. However, I understood enough to be convinced that Hawking is not only one of our time's great scientists but also, despite his disabilities, one of science's great explainers. If you're at all interested in modern Physics, I recommend this book...

Einstein's brain, removed from his body and bouncing around America! What a terrific symbol of...something!

Well, yes and no. Paterniti has a terrific story, chronicling the adventures of Einstein's brain over the last forty-odd years. And he can be genuinely funny when presented with incongruous situations (and when you have Einstein's brain in the back seat, almost all situations are incongruous).

The problem is that Einstein's brain doesn't do much, and Paterniti doesn't do much with it, at least not in a literal sense. They're driving, and there's that brain. That's the whole plot. To fill up the book, Paterniti has to give us his grand thoughts about Einstein and science. These are interesting, but they aren't THAT interesting.

The book is worth reading just to find out what's happened to Einstein's brain. But that's a relatively short section. Paterniti's rambling on about science and America will not hold your attention for all 220+ pages.

When I first heard about this book, I thought it was one of those weird, stream of consciousness stories, so when I discovered that yes, the pathologist who autopsied Einstein *had* taken possession of his brain, and yes, Paterniti *did* travel cross country with the now-elderly pathologist and brain, I just had to read it for myself!

The book itself, like the situation, defies easy categorization. I found it to be at its best as Paterniti describes the travels and visits cross country with the likes of William Burroughs and crazed night clerks for Days Inn. He peppers the travelogue with details about the previous owner of the brain in the trunk, Albert Einstein, which were also interesting, particularly in the context of the journey. I did not feel especially drawn to the ramblings and philosophizing Paterniti sometimes felt the need to include, but was willing to go along for that ride to see where the rest of the journey would take me.

Most compelling is his portrait of the pathologist, Dr. Thomas Harvey. At turns irritated with his quirks and fascinated by him, he paints the doctor as a somewhat eccentric but gentle octogenarian. He handles his near-obsession with the desire to actually see the brain in question with as much dignity as this whole crazy scenario will allow.

If you enjoy the genre of "truth is stranger than fiction," you will find "Driving Mr. Albert" as living up to this category of non-fiction.

I'm a huge fan of Paterniti, whose style I know and appreciate from his writing in *Esquire*. The book doesn't disappoint--quirky yet sensitive, nonfiction but filled with storytelling. The details on Einstein himself were plentiful, and it was the good stuff, not just his "amazing genius" but who he was and why people are still so fascinated. Yet this book is not really about "Big Al." It's about two guys, an elderly owner of Einstein's brain (which he keeps in Tupperware in the trunk of the car!) and a writer flailing around in confusion ("angst" would be exaggerating) about his life, driving across country together. If you enjoy stories that juxtapose love and science, independence and longing, humor and loneliness, you'll love this one.