Einstein: His Life And Universe

How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom.

Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk -- a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate -- became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals.

These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.

Reviews:

Fascinating book, very well written. It's amazing how quickly I was able to devour this book. Highly recommend.

This is a great book about Einstein and how science gets done, or sometimes doesn't get done. As for Big Al's eccentricities and quirks, I would sum them up as being a combination of self-indulgence and a great work ethic. That is not so rare, but the way Einstein carried it off created a peculiar stereotype for scientists that often hits the mark.Compared to his contemporaries, Einstein had an unusual number of brilliant insights. However, it was Leibniz who first observed that there can be no preferred frame of reference (not mentioned in this book). The fact that there is no absolute space or time (same thing) was really a working hypothesis that was good enough for a couple centuries. When Einstein worked out the theory, he was not so much making a breakthrough as dragging physics away from lame philosophy and back to science, where it belongs.But then Einstein made the same sort of mistake by postulating determinism, despite his own pioneering work on Brownian motion. And he did not clue into the fact that the equations of motion of classical mechanics (and thus also general relativity) are nonlinear and hence admit chaotic solutions. (A small asteroid with a chaotic rotation has recently been found.) In his day a few astronomers and mathematicians were beginning to appreciate chaotic dynamics, including Henri Poincaré, who fell short of developing relativity himself (this is in the book). So Einstein spent much of his final years spinning his wheels looking for a unified field theory to fall out of a mathematical formalism rather than relying on the geometric intuition that had made him famous. Physics is still in the rut where Einstein left it, but it has gotten much deeper in the form of string theory. (See: The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next.) The future of physics, I predict, lies in a dynamical theory, one that explains quantum behavior as the stable resonances of nonlinear wave equations. The practitioners will use petaflop supercomputers rather than the backs of old envelopes, but that is the penalty of progress. Charming eccentrics replaced by Dilbertesque computer nerds.

I think that this is a very interesting and wellwritten book; informative and entertaining. I would certainly recommend it to my family and friends.

It's often unfair to rate a book relative to its reputation, but sometimes it is necessary to do so to offset the impression given by other advance billings. I found Isaacon's Einstein to be a serviceable biography, nothing more; certainly not the tour de force I half-expected it to be based on its having climbed to #1 on the best-seller list. Among biographies I read in 2007, Neal Gabler's life of Disney, and Leigh Montville's Babe Ruth bio ("The Big Bam") were certainly superior. So too was Whittaker Chambers's haunting "Witness" (though this was a 50th-year anniversary re-release). Even Bill Bryson's light and unpretentious "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" far outshined this book in the biography/memoir category. Isaacson's book provides the salient details of Einstein's life, and does a fair if unspectacular job of bringing the gist of Einstein's theories into focus for the layman. Biographies of scientists, artists and philosophers can sometimes be frustrating reads when the life narrative isn't as interesting as the subject's body of work. This places a burden on the biographer to convey the aesthetic flavor and force of the subject's work (or, in other words, "what all the fuss was about.") Isaacson does a fair job of this. It's virtually impossible to fully do it with Einstein while omitting nearly all the math, but at least Isaacson manages to get it done without losing the essence of what made Einstein's work fascinating.The larger problem with the book is the author's reduction of Einstein's personality to a few summary points, repeating those over and over, even to the point of jamming virtually every life event into tight pigeonholes. Specifically:-- Einstein, we are told, was repulsed by conformity. Isaacson relates a story of the child Einstein crying when seeing a Germany army marching by in perfect synchronization. Nothing could be more horrifying to this fiercely independent mind than such mindless collective action. Isaacson argues that Einstein's determination to go his own separate way was one of the vital elements of his unique genius.-- Einstein's non-conformity enabled him to avoid running with the pack, even in the political arena. A pacifist for some of his adult life, he had the good sense to eschew pacifism in the age of Hitler.-- Einstein didn't do as badly in school, nor as badly at mathematics, as is often stated, though he was hardly a leading mathematician.-- Einstein had an ambivalent attitude toward his own fame. On the one hand, he was amused by the buffoonery of celebrity culture, and went out of his way to deflate its pretentions. But he cultivated an image of indifference to fame that outstripped the reality that he quite enjoyed it.-- Einstein was often cruel or indifferent to those closest to him, but he deeply felt, especially late in life, moral obligations to humanity at large.-- Einstein was a willing scientific revolutionary early on, but later become something of a scientific conservative. He was never able, for example, to fully accept the achievements of quantum mechanics.-- Einstein preferred simple, elegant theories to fiddly, complex, clunky ones.There, that didn't take so long, did it? The book devotes hundreds of pages to interpreting most of Einstein's life events according to one or the other of these themes. The repetition is vexing, but the bigger problem is that one gets the sense that Isaacson is so determined that these be the defining characteristics of Einstein's life and work, that he allows little room for the possibility of narrative events that collide with the themes.Most of us have read biographies where every childhood event is treated as though it's a precursor or partial explanation for some later adult event or tendency. And we've read bios that seem to reduce a life to a manifestation of a small number of repeated themes. But human beings are more complex than this, and life narratives are rarely so neat and tidy. It seems unlikely that a man of Einstein's intelligence and complexity would have a life that so unremittingly conformed to the favorite leitmotifs of his biographer. No doubt, Isaacson's interpretations have a sound and convincing basis, but the relentless plumbing of these lines left me rather numb by the end of the book.Beyond this, the book simply wasn't as engrossing to read as many biographies are. Certainly a serviceable biography, but not a flawless one.

This book is incredible! The descriptions of Einstein's personal and professional life were unbelievably well written (so much so that I plan to pick up other books written by Walter Isaacson). I respect and appreciate the author's use of 'first person' history; numerous passages from Einstein's own letters are used to tell this story. The author also expertly describes the complex topics of relativity and quantum physics in a way that I could not only understand but enjoy! Best biography of Einstein I've ever read and one that I look forward to re-reading.

Find out more about the most creative scientific genius of modern times. He changes the way we look at the world and used his fame to help the world.

Outstanding book on Einstein's life. Mr Issacson does a excellent job in understanding the theories and physics concepts himself and then explaining them to the general reader. The writing is captivating and the book is easy to read. It also stirs the interest to read and learn more about the work and life of Albert Einstein.Again, I highly recommend this book.

Many biographies have been written on Einstein's life. This is one of the better ones.It is relatively long and very comprehensive; furthermore, it is easy and delightful to read. It is, perhaps, best compared to Albert Folsing's definitive work "Albert Einstein." Isaacson covers much of the same material, but his book appears to be more directed at a popular audience, in that he uses quotes extensively. Some of the more interesting features of the book are Einstein's struggle with his unified field theory, a discussion of his concept of God, his disdain for the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics, and his ideas on peace. The last chapter deals with Einstein's brain: what happened to it and how it compares to other brains. There is a large section of black and white photographs in the center, and a long section of notes at the end. All in all it is an excellent addition to the library of books on Einstein.

Isaacson's treatment of Einstein is as a very human character, in many ways a radical departure from the usual sole emphasis on "the genius". The biography's greatest strength is examining Einstein's life prior to his move to Berlin, especially tracing his philosophical influences and the effects of professional isolation which helped Einstein escape contemporary dogma in his formulation of Relativity. Isaacson does lose some momentum after Einstein's move to Princeton - it would have been interesting to explore his relationship with Kurt Godel more, for example.Technically, the biography is quite light, though the thinking behind certain ideas is explained nicely - it does goad one into further study, or at least contemplation of further study. Very inspiring book as well! I can imagine this pushing a certain reader closer to studying physics, young readers in particular.

I have always wanted to read a biography of Einstein's life but I had 2 questions. First, recognizing that it would not be possible to tell his life story without delving into what I will loosely call "the science", would I understand the science? Second, if the answer to that was no, would I stil be able to enjoy the book anyway? In this case, the answers were "no" and "yes" respectively. I could not understand the huge portions of the book that dealt with his scientific breakthroughs at all and I really can't blame Isaacson for that, because it wasn't for lack of trying on his part. Rather, I suspect that I just don't have a scientific bent, and, more significantly, I think that Einstein's theories are abstruse even for smart people. Because of this, about 40% of the book was a total fog for me. However, that being said, I still think that Isaacson did a great job and as I say, I doubt that anyone else could have made me understand the science either.One of the things that struck me about Einstein's life was the enormous difference between what he accomplished before age 40 (virtually everything he is famous for today) and after age 40 (virtually nothing). In fact, Isaacson himself muses as to whether science would have suffered "if Einstein had retired after the eclipse observations and devoted himself to sailing for the remaining 36 years of his life"? Although his initial answer is yes, it appears that the real answer is no. Isaacson himself acknowledges that his attacks on quantum mechanics were unwarranted and that he "was so much more creative before the age of 40 than after." Also, the mere fact that Isaacson posed the question is telling in and of itself. In fact, I think that Einstein himself said it best: "The intellect gets crippled but glittering renown is still draped around the calcified shell." Because of this I felt that the second half of the biography was much less interesting than the first (again through no fault of Isaacson). At just about the same time he became famous, his scientific breakthroughs ceased, and as the subject of a biography, his life became less interesting, at least for me. (Or, to take sort of the reverse of Isaacson's question, if the biography has started when Einstein turned 40, would it have made for a very good read? No.)Finally, I was a little disappointed at the short shrift which Isaacson gave to the issue of Einstein's possible autism (relegating it to a footnote and concluding that he felt Einstein wasn't). While I would agree with Isaacson that Einstein exhibited some traits and tendencies that were not consistent with autism, I think he exhibited a number of others that were, which could mean that he was simply somewhere on the scale rather than being full-blown autistic. Anyway, the book is a great accomplishment and I give it 5 stars.

What are we supposed to tell the people who fail math and science in school, but still claim to be geniuses now?Anyway, I am glad that Mr. Isaacson set the record straight about Einstein's grades, especially the ones in math. If one knows what mathematical devices Einstein's theories include, one can never claim that Einstein was ever even close to failing math.I would like to list the pros of this book below. Please read it for the cons yourself, since I could not find any, and never intended to find one:* Einstein's theories are generally too abstract, and not everyone can understand them easily. However, Mr. Isaacson explains them as extensively as possible, which makes the reader's job easier. * The author spares a sufficient portion in the book to explain Einstein's thought experiments. The reader can understand these experiments with a little effort since it is clear that Mr. Isaacson made sure he understood them first. If a physicist had written this book, I don't think he would bother going into this much detail, since he would assume that the reader would already know a lot about Physics.* Even though I mostly care about the scientist Einstein, I need to give credit to the author for making the human side of Einstein sound interesting as well.** The Best Side of This Book: I was amazed as I read the correspondence between Einstein and the pioneers of Physics at the start of the 20th century. Before, I did not know that Einstein and the other geniuses of the 20th century were in touch with each other. While reading the book, I learned that Einstein was in direct contact with Madam Curie, Poincare, Riemann, Eddington, Bohr, Born, De Broglie, Planck, Dirac, Pauli, etc. either in person or through writing.*** The Most Touching Part of the Book: The fact that Einstein had to quit the German Gymnasium (high school) because he was a Jew, and the fact that he could not get an academic job at universities for 4 years after his 4 ground-breaking papers in 1905 because of the same reason.**** The Most Disturbing Side of Einstein: The fact that he joined a Zionist cult later in his life, and traveled to America to do some fundraising upon receiving the cult leader's order.***** What I would do differently if I were Einstein? I would choose Caltech over Princeton, not the other way around. Had he never read about California's weather?

Since there are so many cerebral reviews here is some humor. You do not have to understand science to enjoy this book but you do have to weight lift because "Einstein" weighs in at two and a half pounds. (It is not a book you can carry around with you everywhere...I tried.)I am an artist and I would fail a science quiz on this but it is an extremely well written book and Walter Isaacson does his best to make it intellectually digestible to non-science minded individuals that appreciate dynamism, rebellion, imagination as well as trying to understand this universe. The other 150 reviews can give you the insights. Einstein stated, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I real am worried for the future of this planet if young people do not use their imagination and creativity and just sit in front of a tv all day or replace movies with reading. We need to read on diverse topics and than think, imagine. This book is really good brain food. Read it!

If you enjoy reading about people, how they live, how they think, this is a must read. While the book also touches on some of the properties of physics, purely lay man's terms, it doesn't get bogged down in mathematics or the like. Truly a great read.

Well done piece of work. The book captures what we already knew about AE and presents it in a very engaging manner.

You don't have to be proficient in the sciences to enjoy this book. Isaacson writes clearly and he obviously put a lot of research into the text. Albert Einstein and his parents led interesting lives. There are several nuggets of interest I was not aware of until I read the first few chapters- among the most prominent were Einstein's gift for playing the violin and his father with uncle Jacob running one of the first electrical companies.

You might think that a biography of Albert Einstein would be a tough read; full of discussions of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Unified Field Theories that, for the average person at least, would be incomprehensible. In Einstein: His Life And Universe, though, Walter Isaacson takes the life, ideas, and career of one of the most intelligent men to walk the planet and makes it all understandable even to those of us for whom theoretical physics is equally fascinating and baffling. While there are parts of the discussion of Einstein's theories that would a tough read for anyone not already grounded in the subject, for the most part, Isaacson makes the science that Einstein helped developed understandable. Most importantly, though, the book isn't just a history of science, but a history of a very fascinating man.From his early exposure to Pre-World War I Prussian militarism, which turned him into an ardent pacifist, to his escape from Germany during the Nazi rise to power, which caused him to abandon his anti-militarist ideas in the face of a rearming fascist state, to his role in the development of the Atomic Bomb, which turned him into a leading spokesman for a naive, if well-intentioned, call for world government in the face of a technology that could destroy mankind, the Einstein that emerges it at times fascinating and frustrating. Fascinating in the way in which he rebelled against the scientific orthodoxy of his day and revolutionized physics with the General Theory of Relativity only to later become one of the most ardent defenders of the status quo in the face of what he considered the chaos of quantum mechanics. Frustrating in the way that he sometimes treated those close to him -- the kindly professor, it seems, was something of a playboy in his youth.All in all, though, Isaacson does an excellent job of making understandable one of the most complex minds in human history.

THIS BOOK WILL MAKE YOU WONDER ABOUT WHERE EINSTEIN CAME FROM - ANOTHER SOLAR SYSTEM OR FROM THE FUTURE?

Walter Isaacson should be knighted for his smashing biography of the revolutionary physicist and genius of the 20th century, Einstein. His book is an insightful and thorough tale of Einstein's life, and includes a jolly good description of the scientific and philosophical principles Einstein grappled with. Walter Isaacson aces his use of rhetorical devices such as characterization, diction, and appeal to ethos to captivate and tell the story of Einstein's life to his intended audience: intellects who have at least a high school understanding of physics and are interested in the fundamentals of modern physics.In the book Walter Isaacson characterizes Einstein as dedicated, intelligent, and nonconforming. He quotes an old family friend from Einstein's childhood when he says, "He was dedicated to physics from a young age. I never saw him reading any light literature. Nor did I ever see him in the company of schoolmates or other boys his age (18)." This is the first instance of him characterizing Einstein as dedicated. Throughout the book he consciously reaffirms this characterization, like when he writes that during Einstein's relationship problems, "he overcame troubles in his marriage with a sense of duty" (85). Throughout the book he explains Einstein's ultimate dedication - to his science - when he describes how the conflicts in Einstein's life continually turned Einstein back toward science (183). This characterization of Einstein as dedicated is aimed at his intelligent audience. The audience can probably relate to his dedication because intelligent people are usually very dedicated to things in their own lives.He also depicts Einstein as extremely intelligent. This isn't hard to do, because there is a body of evidence confirming this viewpoint. According to our author, "Einstein was good at school" (12) and "At age 16 he wrote his first essay on theoretical physics" (24). Throughout the book he gives numerous examples of Einstein's intelligence, like, "he could look at a complex mathematical equation, which for others was merely an abstraction, and picture the physical reality that lay behind it" (160). He colors Einstein's intelligence as amazing, as when he says, "There was an aesthetic to Einstein's thinking, a sense of beauty" (549). The author's intelligent audience has probably grown up with a reverence for superior intellect and those who possess it, so his portrayal of Einstein as intelligent causes the reader to revere the subject of the book. This anticipated characterization might have even caused the reader to purchase the book in the first place.The author also characterizes Einstein as nonconforming. The author goes to great lengths to impose this characterization, dedicating an entire chapter to Einstein's desire to have a one-world supra national government, writing large sections about Einstein's extreme pacifism, and focusing a large part of the overall book on Einstein's nonconformist attitude toward physics. The author writes that Einstein's "success came from questioning conventional wisdom, challenging authority" (7). He says that "Skepticism and a resistance to received wisdom became a hallmark of his life" (22). Einstein's nonconformity is a huge theme throughout the book. There is a trend in the world for the intellects to constantly question convention and authority. Intelligent people like hearing about others who rise up against established authority to do something that would have otherwise been impossible. The author successfully plays on this and convinces his audience that Einstein was one of the great nonconformists, enough to be idolized.Along with his artful characterization, the author uses scientific and intelligent diction to appeal to his audience. He does a good job of explaining the denotation of his words after he uses them. He usually introduces a term, and then gives a couple explanatory sentences. "...blackbody radiation. As anyone who has played with a kiln or a gas burner knows, the glow from a material such as iron changes color as it heats up..."(94) For really important concepts Einstein himself came up with, the author goes into a detailed explanation. The entire first section of chapter six deals with the background behind special relativity, and from that, Einstein's thought process that reached the complete theory. This denotation of words and concepts is critical for his intelligent audience, because they are interested not only in Einstein's life, but in the very work of Einstein. The explanations of the meanings of the scientific diction is necessary for the audience to understand Einstein's work.While the denotation is important in targeting his audience, the connotation is more so. Connotation of words induce feelings. The scientific words he uses encourages his intelligent audience to feel like they are treated as intellects. He doesn't shirk from abstract verbage, but includes many sentences like, "...he generally began with postulates that he had abstracted from his understanding of the physical world, such as the equivalence of gravity and acceleration" (351). He does this in a way that is easily comprehensible for people without extensive backgrounds in theoretical physics or philosophy. He also uses sagacious diction when explaining things outside of the scientific realm, like when he says "but he [Einstein] soon began to question Kant's rigid distinction between analytic and synthetic truths." (83) This serves to draw the readers of his audience who aren't reading the book solely to increase their scientific understanding, but who also want to increase their understanding of other things, like philosophy. We can see then that are author successfully writes to all people interested in intellectual ideals, so long as they have a basic understanding of physics.Arguably more important than anything thus far in captivating his intended audience is Isaacson's appeal to ethos. Because it is a biography, he must focus on this appeal. Biographies without ethos lack all credibility and no one reads them. Isaacson does a remarkable job in appealing to ethos, using extensive quotations and adding and extensive appendix to the book. Appealing to ethos requires hiding one's own opinion behind what seems to be the real objective truth. Issacson does this by asserting any opinion through quoting others. His use of quotes is obviously extensive; one particular three sentence paragraph has two quotes, and a paraphrase of a quote. (159) This isn't rare. Flipping through the book you can find that it is uncommon for a page to contain a quote-less paragraph. He quotes a number of Einstein's contemporary scientists, including Scottish botanist Robert Brown (103), physicist Max Plank (100), physicist Werner Heisenberg (332), and many others. He also quotes a number of other respected people, such as philosopher Isaiah Berlin (278), historian Arthur Miller (280), and Scottish philosopher David Hume (81). Most of the quotes come from Einstein himself, however. Einstein is respected as an authority figure, so merely quoting Einstein adds to Isaacson's credibility. The extensive quotes serve the author's purspose and establish his appeal to ethos well. His audience respects the work more because they know he isn't making up any opinions to put in his book; the ideas come from well respected sources.The appendix of the book also appeals to ethos. He establishes his credibility by adding twelve pages of sources, seventy-eight pages of notes, and thirty-two pages in the index. All in all, one hundred twenty-two pages of miniscule font from his six hundred seventy-five page book - almost one fifth - are included solely to convince the reader that Isaacson is credible. And one quick glance at any of these pages, especially the `sources' section (with usually over twenty sources per page) is in fact very convincing. The audience isn't expected to read over all the appendix; most people won't search through primary research to verify accuracy. But his readers appreciate the appendix all the same because they know from it that the information in book they're reading is probably very accurate. One can tell that the author did his research, and as a result, his book stands as one of the most credible biographies of Einstein.The author used his scientific diction, characterization, and appeal to pathos to convince his audience that his biography of Einstein was dog's bollocks! Indeed, if the rest of his audience was of my opinion, he did a bloody good job. The audience, after realizing how brilliant this book is, should apply all the positive character traits of Einstein to their own lives. They should become more dedicated, more intelligent, and more nonconforming. They should also have a greater appreciation for words, and they should establish themselves as ethical people who use reasonable sounding arguments. In short, they should exemplify all the rhetorical strategies the author used to make this book marvelous. Cheerio.

We have all heard the legend of Albert Einstein, but we can all benefit from reading Walter Isaacson's excellent biography of this man. In his biography on Benjamin Franklin, Gordon S. Wood mentions that the difficulty with writing about him was "peeling away the layers of mythology" that surrounded Franklin. In many ways this is true of Einstein and Isaacson is masterful at portraying an accurate glimpse of who this person was. Isaacson dispels some of the misleading anecdotes about Einstein, including the one which stated that he had failed mathematics while in high school.Isaacson does a great job of devoting equal time and detail to Einstein's life, passion and science. I am no scientist and I struggled with some of the chapters devoted to the theory of relativity, equivalency, tensors, Brownian motion, etc. But it is important to know the context within which Einstein made his great contributions. I found it fascinating to see Einstein as a young upstart, who did not like authority figures, push science to a new level and then become conservative and attack the then new quantum mechanics. Like anyone else, Einstein was human and Isaacson vividly recounts his difficulties with his first wife Mileva Maric and his sons Hans Albert and Eduard. His intellectual debates with Niels Bohr, his antagonistic relationship with Philip Lenard, and his experience in the United States were very interesting to me. I never knew that after Chaim Weizmann died Israel asked Einstein to become its new leader. That would have been interesting, had he accepted!Isaacson also presents Einstein's human and endearing side: such as his propensity to lose his apartment keys, or the time when he went for a walk and forgot where his house was! This is a nicely balanced book and I commend Isaacson for speaking with physicists to find the best way to explain complex laws of science such as particle and wave theory to those of us, like me, who are science-challenged. Well done, Mr. Isaacson!

Walter Isaacson did an excellent job writing this well-researched, inspiring, and enlightening biography of Albert Einstein. The book was a great joy to read.I was very pleased with the way how relevant concepts, theories, principles, notions, and experiments were introduced and explained in the book (e.g., the equivalence principle, relativity of simultaneity, the Michelson-Morley experiment, Newtonian notions of absolute space and time, etc) as well as the amount of space that was given to other physicists whose work had an impact and influence on Einstein's own work (e.g., Plank, Bohr, Lorentz, Minkowski, etc). The importance of independent thinking and imagination, and having the courage to abandon the conventional wisdom when necessary, was illustrated with many great examples throughout the book (e.g., Newtonian notions of space and time). Einstein was even greater genius than he is thought to be. His ability to come up with such ingenious thought experiments and see their many far-reaching implications on physical reality was truly astonishing.To my delight, the book is also full of great stories illustrating Einstein's sense of humor. My favorite story was the one that described his response to Women Patriots after they had petitioned for denying him a visa to enter the United States. His evocation of the geese that once saved Rome gave me the biggest laugh of all. This book is well worth the time.