YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE...
FDR
by Jean Edward Smith
|
$9.95
List price: 32.00 You save: $22.05
HARDCOVER, USED
Ships in 1 to 3 days
| Qty | Store |
Section |
|---|
| 1 | Local Warehouse | Physics- Biographies and Classics | | Hide store locations |
Click here to show store
and shelf locations
Einstein: His Life and Universe
by Walter Isaacson
|
|
|
|
Only 1 left in stock at $9.95!
Powells.com Staff Pick
In preparing this engaging biography of the world's most famous smart guy, Isaacson enlisted the aid of several physicists including Murray Gell-Mann, Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, and Douglas Stone. As a result, this is much more than an "Einstein slept here" biography; it is an exploration of his influences and contributions to physics, all placed within the context of the times Einstein lived in. Isaacson also made use of newly opened archives, yielding a more complete picture of Einstein than was available to previous biographers. If you have already read an Einstein biography or two, or have even read a few popular books on relativity, don't make the mistake of thinking there's nothing here for you. Isaacson's Einstein is recommended for anyone interested in the professor's physics and philosophy.
Recommended by Doug, Powells.com
"To Isaacson's credit, Einstein: His Life And Universe conveys the dizzying concepts of physics in a way most lay readers (this one certainly qualifies as that) can grasp....While everyone has at least a fuzzy knowledge of Einstein — the shock of unkempt hair, the use of his name as a synonym for genius and an enduring, iconic pop-culture familiarity — much of his basic biography is at least unexamined and probably unknown, as well, by the mainstream audience Isaacson's book targets." Erik Spanberg, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire CSM review) "Einstein was many things: physicist, mathematician (it's a myth that he did poorly in math at school), revolutionary, socialist, pacifist, humanist. That's a whole lot of –ists to keep straight, but Isaacson does an excellent job of presenting a complete picture of Einstein as all of the above and more." Doug Brown, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopses & Reviews 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. Review: "Acclaimed biographer Isaacson examines the remarkable life of 'science's preeminent poster boy' in this lucid account (after 2003's Benjamin Franklin and 1992's Kissinger). Contrary to popular myth, the German-Jewish schoolboy Albert Einstein not only excelled in math, he mastered calculus before he was 15. Young Albert's dislike for rote learning, however, led him to compare his teachers to 'drill sergeants.' That antipathy was symptomatic of Einstein's love of individual and intellectual freedom, beliefs the author revisits as he relates his subject's life and work in the context of world and political events that shaped both, from WWI and II and their aftermath through the Cold War. Isaacson presents Einstein's research — his efforts to understand space and time, resulting in four extraordinary papers in 1905 that introduced the world to special relativity, and his later work on unified field theory — without equations and for the general reader. Isaacson focuses more on Einstein the man: charismatic and passionate, often careless about personal affairs; outspoken and unapologetic about his belief that no one should have to give up personal freedoms to support a state. Fifty years after his death, Isaacson reminds us why Einstein (1879 — 1955) remains one of the most celebrated figures of the 20th century. Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "In the wonderland realm described by Einstein's theory of special relativity, simultaneity generally proves to be an illusion, but in the world of publishing, two good studies of the same subject will often appear at roughly the same time. Then, alas, a variant of another scientific doctrine — Gresham's law — typically goes into effect: One book tends to drive out the other. Walter ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Isaacson's hefty biography of Albert Einstein (1879-1955) appears with lots of panoply — including 11 blurbs by noted scientists and biographers — and the author provides a thorough and patient account of a great thinker's life and achievements. The tone is rightly admiring, though fully aware of the saintly scientist's darker side — at least one illegitimate child, several mistresses, a coldness to his family that verged on heartlessness and cruelty. The prose is straightforward and clear, essential when explaining complex ideas, though sometimes feeling airless or straitjacketed, as if Isaacson were afraid of making a mistake or showing any personal feeling. Like other popularizers before him, he works hard to explain Einstein's conceptual breakthroughs and to lay out his decades-long arguments with Niels Bohr and the progenitors of quantum mechanics. For, sad to say, after the age of 40, this once-revolutionary thinker grew increasingly conservative and stuck in his ways, never bringing himself to fully accept indeterminacy, uncertainty and chance as the secret governors of the universe. In a famous catchphrase, Einstein couldn't believe that God played with dice, and for decades he kept up the search for a 'unified field theory' that would make sense of everything. 'Einstein: His Life and Universe' covers all this and much else in a painstaking and reliable biography. You won't go wrong in reading and learning from it. But Jurgen Neffe's exhilarating 'Einstein: A Biography' is a lot more fun. At first, Neffe might sound like a German counterpart to Isaacson. Both are distinguished journalists, Neffe having won the Egon Erwin Kisch Award, 'the most prestigious award for print journalism in Germany.' While Isaacson is currently the CEO of the Aspen Institute, the German writer is affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. The Neffe biography was even a best-seller in Germany, as Isaacson's earlier life of Benjamin Franklin was in the United States. Yet the two authors approach Albert Einstein quite differently, the American having written a rather stolid, even 'Teutonic' study, while the German has produced a much jazzier one. Neffe's zingy, dramatic style — for which we must offer congratulations to his translator, Shelley Frisch — sometimes calls to mind the New Yorker's John McPhee: His pages are rich in odd facts, take us deep into what one might call the Einstein industry and display both reverence for the genius and lese-majeste before the man. While Isaacson diligently marches us through Einstein's life, thought and career, Neffe tends to be more freewheeling and thematic — one of his chapters is titled 'How Albert Became Einstein: The Psychological Makeup of a Genius'; another is called 'The Burden of Inheritance: Einstein Detectives in Action.' Yet Neffe's swagger and ease don't hide the fact that he's mastered a vast amount of material: He knows 20th-century German history, the development of physics since Galileo, the work of contemporary psychologists and philosophers on the nature of genius and media celebrity. Virtually all of Isaacson's references are to publications in English, and his book sometimes feels like a reporter's distillation of what others have discovered. By contrast, Neffe appears to have worked a bit harder and thought more for himself. For example, Isaacson tells us that Mozart was Einstein's favorite composer, but Neffe adds that the 'Sonata for Piano and Violin in E Minor' was his favorite piece. He also discusses Einstein's cultural tastes, which were so deeply old-fashioned that the physicist found nearly all 20th-century art and music utterly incomprehensible or repellent, especially the works influenced by his own ideas. Furthermore, Neffe offers detailed information about the Einstein family's engineering business, which specialized in installing electric lighting, and shows how a boyhood spent around technical equipment influenced his later thought-experiments. While discussing the crucial impact on the young Einstein's imagination of Aaron Bernstein's 20-volume 'Popular Books on Natural Science,' Isaacson naturally draws on the major study in English of this formative reference work. But Neffe seems to have actually gone and read the books themselves, citing Bernstein more than 15 times, by volume and page number. He reveals through exact quotation how much Einstein's later formulations about gravity, light and space-time echo actual sentences from a child's introduction to the wonders of science. While the German's biography tends to focus on the youthful Einstein and on his cultural as well as scientific afterlife, Isaacson tells us more about the great man's years in America (from 1932 till his death), carefully narrates his involvement with the atomic bomb and movingly elucidates both his mature thinking about religion (God, he believed, could be found in the laws that ordered the universe) and his growing activism on behalf of world government. Isaacson's is, in this respect, the fuller life. But it would be a pity if his account completely overshadowed Neffe's, which is more personal, original and exciting. The latter, for instance, underscores that Einstein's English vocabulary was probably no more than a few hundred words and that the great man was often largely incomprehensible in our language. All his assistants at Princeton had to speak German. For most of us, Albert Einstein remains the emblematic genius-holy man of modern science — part Gandhi, part absent-minded professor, part wide-eyed child. (Neffe notes that Steven Spielberg modeled E.T.'s kindly and sorrowful eyes after those of Einstein.) In his later years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the physicist probably did become something close to a 'Jewish saint' and sage, as he's often been described, but both biographies portray the younger Einstein as a man of unexpected, and sometimes unlikable, contradictions and polarities. As a student, he got a classmate pregnant, sent her away to have the baby (which he refused to see) and then apparently made the young woman give up the child for adoption. He regarded both of his wives as essentially caretakers, their main obligation being to see to his domestic needs. In the case of his first wife, he compelled her to forgo a promising scientific career and then treated her shabbily. He hardly ever saw their mentally ill younger son, whom he dismissed as degenerate. After claiming for years to despise all forms of nationalism, Einstein nonetheless became an enthusiastic Zionist. He spoke up strongly for pacifism throughout the 1920s, but once Hitler rose to power, he grew full of martial anti-Nazi ardor. This isn't to say that he was wrong to embrace his Jewish identity or to fear Hitler's evil, but his ideological flip-flops are nonetheless disconcerting. Similarly, he initiated the development of the atomic bomb as a weapon against the hated Third Reich, yet deplored its use on Japan. He was largely indifferent to the victims of Stalin's show trials and purges but strongly supported the Pugwash conferences for world peace. What's more, this childlike genius absolutely required full-time assistants, housekeepers and support staff to live his simple, Spartan life. He also clearly loved publicity, women and sleep (Neffe tells us he generally slept at least 10 hours a night and often took naps). Though Einstein's may be the very face of scientific genius, he never really advanced much in his thought after winning the Nobel Prize in 1921 and, despite being widely revered, gradually lost touch with the cutting edge of physics. After finishing some biographies, readers often feel an increased admiration for the subject. This isn't true for Einstein. More and more, he seems almost as flawed a human being as Pablo Picasso, John F. Kennedy and so many other icons of the 20th century. Read either of these two books and that well-known face will never look quite the same again. Still, it probably doesn't matter very much. Einstein provides one case when we might surely say: It's the thought that counts. Michael Dirda's e-mail address is mdirda(at symbol)gmail.com." Reviewed by Rajiv ChandrasekaranRachel Hartigan SheaMarina WarnerCarrie SheffieldMichael MewshawDavid TreuerMichael Dirda, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review: "With the help of many witty, candid letters, Mr. Isaacson offers a wonderfully rounded portrait of the ever-surprising Einstein personality." Janet Malsin, New York Times Review: "Isaacson's biography really takes off...when Einstein arrives in the USA in 1921." USA Today Review: "While everyone has at least a fuzzy knowledge of Einstein...much of his basic biography is at least unexamined and probably unknown...by the mainstream audience Isaacson's book targets." Christian Science Monitor Review: "Walter Isaacson's big new biography of Albert Einstein is sure to be one of the most admired and popular books of this year. Whatever your background in science, Einstein: His Life and Universe is a joy and a revelation to read — rich in detail, insightful, superbly researched and written.... Isaacson brings this history to life with the qualities that defined Einstein himself: a breadth of vision, a freedom from conformity, an underlying humanism and sense of humor." Cleveland Plain Dealer Review: "Like its subject, Walter Isaacson's ambitious biography of Albert Einstein radiates intelligence, wit and eloquence." Miami Herald Synopsis: From the bestselling author of Benjamin Franklin comes the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available — a fully realized portrait of this extraordinary human being and great genius. About the Author Walter Isaacson,the president of the Aspen Institute, has been the chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Benjamin Franklin. Table of Contents CONTENTS Acknowledgments""" Main Characters""" CHAPTER ONE The Light-Beam Rider"" CHAPTER TWO Childhood, 1879-1896""" CHAPTER THREE The Zurich Polytechnic, 1896-1900"" CHAPTER FOUR The Lovers,"1900-1904"" CHAPTER FIVE The Miracle Year: Quanta and Molecules, 1905""" CHAPTER SIX Special Relativity, 1905""" CHAPTER SEVEN The Happiest Thought, 1906-1909""" CHAPTER EIGHT The Wandering Professor, 1909-1914""" CHAPTER NINE General Relativity, 1911-1915""" CHAPTER TEN Divorce, 1916-1919""" CHAPTER ELEVEN Einstein's Universe, 1916-1919""" CHAPTER TWELVE Fame, 1919""" CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Wandering Zionist, 1920-1921""" CHAPTER FOURTEEN Nobel Laureate, 1921-1927""" CHAPTER FIFTEEN Unified Field Theories, 1923-1931""" CHAPTER SIXTEEN Turning Fifty, 1929-1931""" CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Einstein's God""" CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Refugee, 1932-1933""" CHAPTER NINETEEN America, 1933-1939""" CHAPTER TWENTY Quantum Entanglement, 1935""" CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The Bomb, 1939-1945"" CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO One-Worlder, 1945-1948""" CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Landmark, 1948-1953""" CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Red Scare, 1951-1954""" CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The End, 1955""" EPILOGUE Einstein's Brain and Einstein's Mind""" Sources """ Notes""" Index""
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780743264730
- Subtitle:
- His Life and Universe
- Author:
- Isaacson, Walter
- Author:
- Isaacson, Walter
- Publisher:
- Simon & Schuster
- Subject:
- General
- Subject:
- Physics
- Subject:
- History
- Subject:
- Historical - General
- Subject:
- Physicists
- Subject:
- Relativity
- Subject:
- Relativity (physics)
- Subject:
- Scientists - General
- Subject:
- General Biography
- Copyright:
- 2007
- Publication Date:
- April 2007
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 675
- Dimensions:
- 9.25 x 6.25 in
|
