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Product DescriptionBy the author of the acclaimed bestseller Benjamin Franklin, this is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available.
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.
Amazon.com ReviewAs a scientist, Albert Einstein is undoubtedly the most epic among 20th-century thinkers. Albert Einstein as a man, however, has been a much harder portrait to paint, and what we know of him as a husband, father, and friend is fragmentary at best. With Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson (author of the bestselling biographies Benjamin Franklin and Kissinger) brings Einstein's experience of life, love, and intellectual discovery into brilliant focus. The book is the first biography to tackle Einstein's enormous volume of personal correspondence that heretofore had been sealed from the public, and it's hard to imagine another book that could do such a richly textured and complicated life as Einstein's the same thoughtful justice. Isaacson is a master of the form and this latest opus is at once arresting and wonderfully revelatory. --Anne Bartholomew
Read "The Light-Beam Rider," the first chapter of Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe.
Five Questions for Walter Isaacson
Amazon.com: What kind of scientific education did you have to give yourself to be able to understand and explain Einstein's ideas?
Isaacson: I've always loved science, and I had a group of great physicists--such as Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, and Murray Gell-Mann--who tutored me, helped me learn the physics, and checked various versions of my book. I also learned the tensor calculus underlying general relativity, but tried to avoid spending too much time on it in the book. I wanted to capture the imaginative beauty of Einstein's scientific leaps, but I hope folks who want to delve more deeply into the science will read Einstein books by such scientists as Abraham Pais, Jeremy Bernstein, Brian Greene, and others.
Amazon.com: That Einstein was a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office when he revolutionized our understanding of the physical world has often been treated as ironic or even absurd. But you argue that in many ways his time there fostered his discoveries. Could you explain?
Isaacson: I think he was lucky to be at the patent office rather than serving as an acolyte in the academy trying to please senior professors and teach the conventional wisdom. As a patent examiner, he got to visualize the physical realities underlying scientific concepts. He had a boss who told him to question every premise and assumption. And as Peter Galison shows in Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps, many of the patent applications involved synchronizing clocks using signals that traveled at the speed of light. So with his office-mate Michele Besso as a sounding board, he was primed to make the leap to special relativity.
Amazon.com: That time in the patent office makes him sound far more like a practical scientist and tinkerer than the usual image of the wild-haired professor, and more like your previous biographical subject, the multitalented but eminently earthly Benjamin Franklin. Did you see connections between them?
Isaacson: I like writing about creativity, and that's what Franklin and Einstein shared. They also had great curiosity and imagination. But Franklin was a more practical man who was not very theoretical, and Einstein was the opposite in that regard.
Amazon.com: Of the many legends that have accumulated around Einstein, what did you find to be least true? Most true?
Isaacson: The least true legend is that he failed math as a schoolboy. He was actually great in math, because he could visualize equations. He knew they were nature's brushstrokes for painting her wonders. For example, he could look at Maxwell's equations and marvel at what it would be like to ride alongside a light wave, and he could look at Max Planck's equations about radiation and realize that Planck's constant meant that light was a particle as well as a wave. The most true legend is how rebellious and defiant of authority he was. You see it in his politics, his personal life, and his science.
Amazon.com: At Time and CNN and the Aspen Institute, you've worked with many of the leading thinkers and leaders of the day. Now that you've had the chance to get to know Einstein so well, did he remind you of anyone from our day who shares at least some of his remarkable qualities?
Isaacson: There are many creative scientists, most notably Stephen Hawking, who wrote the essay on Einstein as "Person of the Century" when I was editor of Time. In the world of technology, Steve Jobs has the same creative imagination and ability to think differently that distinguished Einstein, and Bill Gates has the same intellectual intensity. I wish I knew politicians who had the creativity and human instincts of Einstein, or for that matter the wise feel for our common values of Benjamin Franklin.
More to Explore
Wonderful (Rating: 5 out of 5) An enlightening look at Einstein's life from birth to death and everythinig inbetween. There was just enough discusion of physics to give you a background, but comprehendable to the non-physists of the world. The author covered the creation of the theory of relativity, but it was not the focus of the book. It rather focused on Einstein's aproach to life, his way of thinking and philosophies that caused him to create his theories. I found the book a comprehensive view of his life and entirely enjoyable.
Einstein, Walter Isaacson's masterly biography. (Rating: 5 out of 5) A page turner. Full of the life of Einstein and his fellow scientists in his day. Interesting insights into the person and his work. Easy to understand explanations of the science and theories. A tireless work of research and building up in a logical order of a life filled with the excitement of discovery, the pressure to be first in formulating ideas, to maintain friendships and remain true to basic human dignity in the face of an emerging ruthless political system. The sadness of drifting off on the seemingly dead end of finding a field theory and rejecting the lure of quantum mechanics.
This book was hard to put away for the night. Prose and style give support to the reader. No loose ends, no questions or vagueness. At the end of the book, all has been dealt with and the only thing remaining is the useless bookmark and the need to find a book as good as this one. Of course, one can always start at page one again.
Good, but not to the level of Isaacson's "Franklin" (Rating: 4 out of 5) It is interesting to see that 4 years after Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin: An American Life he chose to write about another rebel scientist in Albert Einstein. While the two men make a great compare/contrast it doesn't make it any easier for the author writing the books (NOTE: At no point during "Einstein" does Isaacson try to compare/contrast the two). While writing on Franklin most readers can grasp the scientific and political thoughts that are being discussed. This is not necessarily true of the readers of Einstein.
I need to offer a bit of a disclaimer - I am a degreed engineer who has taken multiple classes in quantum mechanics. However, there are times I had difficulty in grasping the concepts that Isaacson was presenting. While I believe that Isaacson did much research I did find that his approach to explaining the concepts to be a bit clumsy. Please do not take this as being overly negative - MOST people will look clumsy when trying to explain the theory of general relativity or the photoelectric effect. However, in "einstein" it made sections of the book very difficult to read much less comprehend. I have a lot of sympathy to the readers who have never been introduced to these concepts prior to reading "Einstein".
That is the negative - it can be a very difficult read at times (which is the reason for 4 stars instead of 5). On a positive note (and there are many more positives than negatives) Isaacson has presented us with a lovable yet humanly flawed Einstein. We are told of the passion and failures of his first marriage. We are shown great insights into the curious thought experiments that he performed to generate his great insights (such as a person who is accelerated downward at high acceleration doesn't know if it is "gravity" or another force that he is feeling) or the perceived changes in light on a passenger on a train compared to someone viewing from the train station.
Another insight that we rarely see is his opposition to nationalism and the loss of personal liberty. Einstein was a very outspoken critic of McCarthyism and he did not shy away from the controversy. In short, Einstein was a rebel for the conventional thought of science and that of politics. Isaacson is very skilled in showing these comparisons throughout Einstein's life.
While Isaacson's "Einstein" does not reach the level of "Franklin" in story-telling skill or scientific explanation it is still a must read for anyone curious in the development of modern thought in Physics...for everyone else... I hope you are up to the challenge. 4 stars.
4 stars.
Einstein's Life (Rating: 5 out of 5) This is an outstanding life of Einstein; it portrays his genius at every stage of life, and leads to understanding his positions on issues both scientific and political.
Great peek into the brain and being of the man (Rating: 4 out of 5) Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R97YEZJZMMBZG My personal opinion and impression of this complicated life story