I recently read a much more informative book "Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist" by Christopher Jon Bjerknes which tells the truth about Einstein and the 1905 papers Einstein's wife Mileva Maric wrote for him. The Bjerknes book is a scholarly book, and it presents the facts. Anyone interested in the 1905 papers should know the truth. Max Born said of the 1905 relativity paper, "It gives you the impression of quite a new venture. But that is, of course, as I have tried to explain, not true." The truth is that the theory belongs to Boscovich, Lange, Voigt, Fitzgerald, Larmor, Lorentz, Palagyi, and Poincare, among many others. The 1905 paper on special relativity did not give a single reference to these men.

If you're looking for a good book to learn a bit about Einstein's theories of relativity, you'd be better served reading his "The Meaning of Relativity." "Einstein's Miraculous Year," being a compilation of translated versions of his original 1905 papers, is more suited for the seasoned physicist who already understands the material but is curious about how Einstein really did it all. In the latter case, of course, one could turn to the professional physics literature, but it's nice to have all his 1905 papers in one place. The extra commentary is a nice addition, since it provides the necessary historical context. Too bad the book doesn't include Einstein's papers on his general theory of relativity but, of course, that would fall out of the miraculous year of 1905.

I am a nonscientist, general reader, but have read many popular accounts of special relativity. I have always felt shortchanged, though, just at the point where things get most interesting. I think that is because the real physics does lie in the equations, and verbal metaphors fall short. For me, here, for the first time, I see where the science is: just beyond the metaphors. Although I do not follow all the math by any means, so it is partly like listening to a foreign language, I recognized enough of the concepts to get a glimmer: and it is stunning. Here is Einstein himself, deriving E=mc2 in paper 4; so briefly, so lucidly (although another reader from California seems to have missed it). Paper 3 on special relativity is, even to this nonscientist, dazzling.