Einstein: His Life and Universe
by Walter Isaacson
List Price:
Our Price: $5.50
You Save: $12.45 (69%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $4.48 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Walter IsaacsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-13
ISBN: 0743264746
Number of pages: 704
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Accessories:
- The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made
- Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
- Einstein: His Life and Universe
Book Reviews of Einstein: His Life and Universe
Book Review: Balanced and Interesting Treatment
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an excellent biography. The author clearly is very fond of Einstein, and his thesis is that Einstein, and his genius, were defined by his inclination to flout convention and resist authority. But those attitudes are presented gently, as Einstein "putters" and resists, and does not dominate or overpower the objective presentation of information. In short, the author has a point of view, but he uses it to create a theme without letting it dominate or control the story.
I started the book simply because I wanted to know more about Einstein, and I was right to do so! While Einstein remains an icon, even this middle-aged professor did not have a full sense of the central role of Einstein in the social history of the first-half of the 20th Century. He was REALLY big --- Muhammad Ali big --- for a period of decades. The book does an excellent job of showing how Einstein became so prominent (he courted the press and guided his image, not to mention his genius) and the significant role public policy played in the second half of his life.
I also liked the way the book handled Einstein's science, his personal life, and his public life outside of science. Chapters handle each of these areas one at time, rather than following strict chronological order. So we might learn what happened with his science in 1920-25, and only later learn what was happening in his personal life at that time. With careful guidance and signposts from the author, that keep us from getting confused on the timing, I found this a very productive way to tell the story. I also thought the science explanations were good for this layman. If you hate science, this book will be problematc. Otherwise, though, the explantions actually made me feel I understood what, say, relativity was about, though if you asked me to explain it minutes later, I could not have.
All in all, an intresting and educational read.
Summary of Einstein: His Life and Universe
By 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.
As 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
|
|  Kissinger: A Biography |  The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made |
Scientists Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Scientists Books
Dr. Folkman's War: Angiogenesis and the Struggle to Defeat Cancerby Robert Cooke
Random House; Published: 2001-02-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.99
Price in other shops:
A Smile as Big as the Moon: A Special Education Teacher, His Class, and Their Inspiring Journey Through U.S. Space Campby Mike Kersjes
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 2003-02-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.79
Price in other shops:
The All-American Boysby Walter Cunningham
IBooks; Published: 2003-07-04; Audio CD; Book
Price in other shops:
Code Name: God: The Spiritual Odyssey of a Man of Scienceby Mani Bhaumik
The Crossroad Publishing Company; Published: 2008-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.00
Price in other shops:
Out of Harm's Way: The Extraordinary True Story of One Woman's Lifelong Devotion to Animal Rescueby Terri Crisp, Samantha Glen
Pocket Books; Published: 1996-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.75
Price in other shops:
The Coalwood Wayby Homer Hickam
Island Books; Published: 2001-09-04; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.63
Price in other shops:
My Family and Other Animalsby Gerald Malcolm Durrell
Viking Penguin Inc; Published: 1968-08; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
Journey through Genius: Great Theorems of Mathematicsby William Dunham
Wiley; Published: 1990-03-16; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.13
Price in other shops:
Steve & Meby Terri Irwin
Simon Spotlight Entertainment; Published: 2008-09-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.94
Price in other shops:
October Skyby Homer H. Hickam
Perfection Learning; Published: 1999-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.04
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.)by Michael Chabon
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.70
Price in other shops:
The Reagan Diariesby Ronald Reagan
Harper Perennial; Published: 2009-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.31
Price in other shops:
Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Scienceby David Lindley
Anchor; Published: 2008-02-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.94
Price in other shops:
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincolnby Doris Kearns Goodwin
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2006-09-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.74
Price in other shops:
The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Madeby Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas
Simon & Schuster; Published: 1997-06-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.30
Price in other shops:
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everythingby Christopher Hitchens
Twelve; Published: 2009-04-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.38
Price in other shops:
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Courtby Jeffrey Toobin
Doubleday; Published: 2007-09-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.20
Price in other shops:
Ideas And Opinionsby Albert Einstein
Three Rivers Press; Published: 1995-06-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.89
Price in other shops:
FDRby Jean Edward Smith
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2008-05-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.07
Price in other shops:
Benjamin Franklin: An American Lifeby Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.74
Price in other shops: