Einstein: His Life and Universe
by Walter Isaacson
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Book Reviews of Einstein: His Life and Universe
Book Review: Insightful, detailed, thorough and entertaining
Summary: 5 Stars
Amazing work by Walter Isaacson. I was amazed at how well he has explained Relativity and Quantum Physics, albeit at an extremely high level for the layman. This helps appreciate the depth of Einstein's world. In one chapter he explains relativity of gravitational and intertial masses and the gist of the Bose-Einstein condensation, and in the next he talks about Einstein's personal God, philosophy and relationships with women. It takes a lot of skill to write such a balanced narrative, and Isaacson pulls it off adroitly. The narrative moves at a pleasant pace - from modest beginnings in Zurich, the magic year in Bern, to fame and authority in Berlin, and later in the US, to a poignant ending in Princeton. The race with David Hilbert to publish the General Relativity papers reads almost like a thriller!
The only very minor gripe I had was that it is well known that he spent many futile years on his Unified Field Theory, but describing his every frustration with it makes the narrative a bit tedious in some chapters. Instead it could have focussed a bit more on his life in Princeton itself - I heard he had a brief interaction with John Nash - but that is not mentioned anywhere.
We will never know details of the personal lives of Newton and Galileo and Euclid - so well written books like this are all the more valuable because this is the first time ever in the history of mankind that we get to follow the personal life Albert Einstein - the genius who we can proudly claim lived in 'our times' !
Book Review: Twentieth Century Icon
Summary: 4 Stars
Previous reviews have called this book a real page turner. That is very true... and you will have to turn a lot of pages to get to the end. I found myself looking forward to the end. I was exhausted. However, the portrait is well drawn and with a loving hand.
The book climaxed about half way through with the birth of the relativity theory (as did Einstein's life). After the great breakthroughs Einstein settled into a role of cultural icon without much additional scientific output. And the book likewise moves on to Einstein the activist celebrity.
I was fascinated to learn how Einstein epitomized and perhaps helped shape what is the modern humanist style celebrity. The usual stuff... lover of mankind but a jackass to his own family. But, you'll find yourself still liking the guy! He was the original.
And therein lies the saving grace of this huge book. You'll probably learn as much about the inner life of Einstein as you ever will... from a book. The author attemps to describe the multiple threads of circumstance and thought that went into Einstein's theories -- scientific, philosophic and personal. I think he is fairly successful at it.
If you wnat to learn more about Einstein the man and take a romp through the tumultuous fist half of the twentieth century try this book on for size. It's large but comfy.
Book Review: A must-read if you are interested in the history of science
Summary: 5 Stars
Walter Isaacson has done a masterful job of retracing Albert Einstein's life, including his earliest childhood, his miracle year of 1905, the development of general relativity and his political activism. This book is an erudite yet thoroughly readable and entertaining look at the man.
His genius was in being able to see physical meaning to equations; to him an equation was a representation of physical reality. His weakness was in not accepting quantum mechanics, to which can be attributed his famous quote about God and dice. Most enjoyable about the book were his exchanges with the quantum scientists such as Max Born and Niels Bohr. Isaacson was completely objective, illustrating his strengths in science, his weaknesses in relationships, and his naïveté in politics.
The author also was able to communicate the difficult scientific concepts necessary for understanding physics today. Indeed this is the clearest book I have read on the subject but possibly also the least detailed, although these may go hand-in-hand. I suggest, if you are making a new foray into reading about the history of physics, that you start here. This book will give you a good foothold into reading other books such as Kip Thorne's "Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy."
Book Review: A fascinating life, brilliantly portrayed
Summary: 5 Stars
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson is a superb biography that incorporates all the materials that were embargoed until 2006. Isaacson does his level best to explain the science in a cogent manner and, while I remain as mystified by relativity and quantum mechanics as ever, that illustrates the near impossibility of explaining modern physics to a popular audience rather than Isaacson's limitations as an author. A particularly noteworthy aspect of the book is the astounding amount of fact checking that went into its creation as revealed by the Acknowledgements: I don't think I've come across another book as carefully peer-reviewed as this one. (I spotted just one small error that got past the reviewers).
Einstein's life, it should be said, was full and extremely interesting and thus certainly worthy of a long biography. Isaacson lives up to his subject: he writes well (if not brilliantly), adroitly weaves together the different threads of Einstein's personality and career, and manages to convey Einstein's greatness without becoming obsequious. Apart from a couple of inevitable differences in interpretation, the only negative thing I have to say is that Isaacson is unnecessarily repetitive in places. Overall, though, it's a fascinating life, brilliantly portrayed.
Book Review: A joy even for the scientifically illiterate
Summary: 5 Stars
As the title of this review indicates I am ashamed to admit I am a scientific illiterate. I barely got through high school Chemistry and Trigonometry. As such I was reluctant to try this book. But I loved Isaacson's work on Franklin, and as such decided to give this a try. I could not put this book down. The greatest attribute I can pay to this book is that while parts of it were unfathomable to me, I persevered through them with the knowledge that soon I would again be enjoying Isaacson's incredible narrative. This book is not simply a biography. Nor is it, as I wrongly anticipated, an incomprehensible analysis of advanced scientific thought. Rather it is a look at the burning issues of the 20th Century (Nationalism, Socialism and Communism, Appeasement and the rise of Nazism, Hiroshima, McCarthyism...) through the life of its greatest thinker.
If, like me, you are among the unenlightened regarding Physics and high level Math, do not be intimidated by this book. You too will wade through relativity, electromagnetism, and the search for a unified field theory, knowing that soon you will be back to a more understandable summary of a wonderful life.