In 1879 Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. He moved to Munich, Germany when he was a baby. When Einstein was a child, he witnessed the town theater being lighted up by his father and uncle's D.C. generator. In that time his town did not have electricity. Later that night he was marveled by the power of light. He was determined to find the secret behind light and the way it worked.
As a child Einstein did not enjoy school at all. He usually daydreamed in class and was not interested in what the rest of the class was doing. He also hated the teachers and the way they taught. He thought they were like the military, strict and very unimaginative. Soon his family left for Italy and left Einstein behind to finish school. He became the class clown and was later expelled from school. The author tells all the things that Einstein went through as a child, as a young adult, and as a man.
What I liked about the book was all the theories, experiments, and the way the author describes everything so thoroughly. I recommend this book for people who are interested in famous American heroes or are just interested in Albert Einstein. I really hope you read this book.

I am a 5th grade science teacher and require my students to read and report on a scientist biography each semester. This book does an excellent job of retelling the story of Einstein's life, including his life challanges (personal and academic). The book deals with the Nazi rise to power of the 30's and its effects of the scienctific community. This is all done while still giving a accurate and understandable explaiation of Einstein's work. And, most importantly, my students really enjoy it.

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.

Although Einstein's basic life history and his theoretical concepts are reviewed moderately well for a child of about twelve, we found the book difficult to read due to the short and very choppy sentence structure. This writing style was very distracting to us as we tried to read this aloud to our children. Parent added dynamics and humor helped retain interest. Photos were only moderately relavent and the illustrations were actually mediocre quality black and white sketches.

Our 9 year old son brought this book home from the library, and now we're buying it for ourselves and as gifts. This book not only reads easily, and defines difficult words when needed, it gives the reader a look at Einstein's life, as well as explaining his revolutionary theories. We see how experiences in Einstein's personal life influenced his theories, and how his theories influenced history. Most important of all, I now understand the theory of relativity! The author does an excellent job of explaining Einstein's theories step by step, with simple pictures when needed. I have always wondered just how traveling at the speed of light could cause time to slow - that idea has never made sense to me, and no one has ever been able to explain it to me. Oh, how I wish Joyce Goldenstern could teach physics to all. This book is not only a must read, it is a must own for inquisitive adults, children, and parents of inquisitive children.

Einstein: Decoding the Universe is a short,nice little book about Einstein that can be read in a matter of hours. I found the book quite interesting but I admit that I have never read a book on Einstein prior to this one. Thus, I cannot accurately compare this book to another on him. Main details about his life are covered without going into an intricate life story. Over 20 pages in the back were devoted to letters he had written or others had written about him. I gave the book only 4 stars because I thought there could have been a little more mathematical jargon included. But, for the price and the brevity, I recommend this book as one to take and read while at an airport or what not.

The Abrams Discoveries series delivers another gorgeous book, with slick paper and beautiful photos and illustrations on every page. From drawings, graphs and pictures to Einstein's own scribblings-- even a Magritte painting and newspaper comics of the day-- the publishers have pulled out all the stops, giving the reader a kaleidoscopic visual treat. All of this brings to life the concepts in a punchy and and intriguing way. However, the text itself, translated from French physics professor Francoise Balibar's original, is insubstantial and only valuable as an overview and survey of Einstein's life and thought. While the author explores the political and scientific climate with sureness and ease, and illustrates particularly well Einstein's unique contributions-- vast as they are-- to 20th Century physics, the text never goes too deep into its subject.

I'd recommend this book to someone wanting a painless summation, introductory or otherwise, of Einstein. For someone wanting to get deep into the ramifications of relativity theory or the disharmony between it and quantum physics, I'd recommend another book-- perhaps Brian Greene's _The Elegant Universe_ or a book by Einstein himself.

Out of my Later Years is a collection of Einstein's speeches and articles covering not just physics but his thoughts on the social condition of man, of Jews, and of war as well as several speeches about the likes of Max Planck, Mahatma Gandhi, and Marie Curie.

As letters and speeches, these are written as the ordinary man that Einstein once was - very easy to read and understand. Even some of the physics lectures are understandable. Each is relatively short making this perfect for when you want to read something of substance but don't have much time.

The sections on Public Affairs are especially haunting as Einstein presents his arguments for the "global village" and advocated someting akin to the current U.N. - things that began to come into their own after his passing. In particular, there is an interchange between him and a group of Communist scientists that underlines the Cold War tension in its height and is a chilling read now in the Post Soviet Union age.

I found Einstein's desire to start a rock band at such an early age very surprising. A man before his time for sure. Singing about relativity while distancing himself from the groupies must have been difficult. The book reads like a good guitar riff, jolting one's mind from time to time. Excellent!

There is not much to say they're postcards. But I found them great to say hi to my old physics

professor. I found a link to these postcards on

explorespace.com You really can't beat 80 cents for 6 great postcards.

Albert Einstein: Theoretical Physicist by Aylesa Forsee is a biography that would appeal to readers of any age. I liked it because it gave more information about Einstein's personality and went into less detail about the science that made him famous. His theories and figures are explained well but kept simple enough so anyone could understand them. The book's not very exciting, but it keeps you coming back to it after every chapter. The book covers many interesting facts of physics and laws of nature that Albert's curiosity and desire to learn brought this knowledge to the world. I would recomend this book to anyone who is interested in Einstein, his discoveries, or the laws of nature.

I'm glad I read Thomas Levenson's EINSTEIN IN BERLIN in spite of its atrocious publisher's blurb: "In a book that is both biography and the most exciting form of history, here are eighteen years in the life of a man, Albert Einstein, and a city, Berlin, that were in many way the defining years of the twentieth century." What "the most exiting form of history" may be is never explained. Fortunately, the book is better written than its jacket. Levenson, a documentary filmmaker who produced a two-hour biography of Einstein for Nova, can paint memorable pictures with words too. In general, he does better by Einstein than he does by Berlin.

Levenson strikes a good balance between the details of Einstein's private life, his scientific work, and his political activities. The book's greatest strength is its rendering of Einstein's contributions to theoretical physics into a form digestible even by a scientific illiterate. Levenson shows the process as well as the final result; the failures as well as the triumphs. He explains the ongoing debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr over arcane aspects of quantum mechanics. I was intrigued by the "mind experiments" Einstein used to test his theories and those of other phyicists. The chapters summarizing Einstein's life before and after Berlin give the reader sufficient context for understanding his "defining" years. Some aspects of his personal life get short shrift: his activity as an amateur musician, for example. We learn that his friendship with Queen Elizabeth of Belgium began when they played chamber music together, but we never are given a glimpse of him playing, nor any sense of the time he devoted to this pastime.

Levenson is more impressionistic in his portrayal of Berlin. It is not so much Einstein's Berlin we are shown as that of his friend Count Harry Kessler, a liberal bon vivant whose Diary of a Cosmopolitan is quoted extensively. The reader learns almost nothing about the university that employed Einstein for eighteen years beyond the small circle of scientists with whom he associated. Levenson describes the nightlife and popular culture of Berlin at length, but shows little of its high culture. Much space is devoted to Josephine Baker and Fritz Lang, but Schonberg, Schnabel, Kadinsky and Lotte Leyna are mentioned only when they became refugees. Levenson is thorough in detailing political and economic events in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany, but provides little insight into the daily life of ordinary Berliners.

Levenson gives the reader more of WWI and Adolf Hitler's part in it than seems necessary for this book. Details of the major battles and of Corporal Hitler's medals are unnecessary to an understanding of Einstein's opposition to the war or of Berlin's experience during the war. It was Hitler the politician, not Hitler the soldier, who impacted Berlin and Einstein so profoundly in later years.

This book contains a facsimile of the hand written draft of the original relativity paper by Albert Einstein. The quality of the facsimile is great, and it is quite interesting to see the corrections made by A.E. to the draft.

The paper itself is surprisingly readable as the mathematical notation used is still very much current. Reading the paper requires first-year calculus and physics, so this book is definitely not for everybody.

The left side of the page contains a translation in English of the facsimile of the original in German, which appears on the right side of the page.

As an engineer I feel obligated to keep up to speed with things scientific, and I also have an interest in Physics. This book definitely updates modern Physics to an average reader, and has many interesting stories to supplement the material. It has just the right mix of science, history and math to keep the reader interested. I seriously recommend it to all interested in Physics.