Einstein: His Life and Universe
by: Walter Isaacson
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Amazon.com Review:
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 beable 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--whotutored me, helped me learn the physics, and checked various versions ofmy book. I also learned the tensor calculus underlying generalrelativity, but tried to avoid spending too much time on it in the book.I wanted to capture the imaginative beauty of Einstein's scientificleaps, but I hope folks who want to delve more deeply into the sciencewill read Einstein books by such scientists as Abraham Pais, JeremyBernstein, Brian Greene, and others.
Amazon.com: That Einstein was a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office when herevolutionized our understanding of the physical world has often beentreated as ironic or even absurd. But you argue that in many ways histime there fostered his discoveries. Could you explain?
Isaacson: I think he was lucky to be at the patent office rather than serving asan acolyte in the academy trying to please senior professors and teachthe conventional wisdom. As a patent examiner, he got to visualize thephysical realities underlying scientific concepts. He had a boss whotold him to question every premise and assumption. And as Peter Galisonshows in Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps, many of the patentapplications involved synchronizing clocks using signals that traveledat the speed of light. So with his office-mate Michele Besso as asounding 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 apractical scientist and tinkerer than the usual image of the wild-hairedprofessor, and more like your previous biographical subject, themultitalented but eminently earthly Benjamin Franklin. Did you seeconnections between them?
Isaacson: I like writing about creativity, and that's what Franklin and Einsteinshared. They also had great curiosity and imagination. But Franklin wasa more practical man who was not very theoretical, and Einstein was theopposite in that regard.
Amazon.com: Of the many legends that have accumulated around Einstein, what didyou find to be least true? Most true?
Isaacson: The least true legend is that he failed math as a schoolboy. He wasactually great in math, because he could visualize equations. He knewthey were nature's brushstrokes for painting her wonders. For example, hecould look at Maxwell's equations and marvel at what it would be like toride alongside a light wave, and he could look at Max Planck's equationsabout radiation and realize that Planck's constant meant that light wasa particle as well as a wave. The most true legend is how rebellious anddefiant of authority he was. You see it in his politics, his personallife, 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 thechance to get to know Einstein so well, did he remind you of anyone fromour day who shares at least some of his remarkable qualities?
Isaacson: There are many creative scientists, most notably Stephen Hawking, whowrote the essay on Einstein as "Person of the Century" when I was editorof Time. In the world of technology, Steve Jobs has the same creativeimagination and ability to think differently that distinguishedEinstein, and Bill Gates has the same intellectual intensity. I wish Iknew politicians who had the creativity and human instincts of Einstein,or for that matter the wise feel for our common values of BenjaminFranklin.
Product Description:
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 beable 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--whotutored me, helped me learn the physics, and checked various versions ofmy book. I also learned the tensor calculus underlying generalrelativity, but tried to avoid spending too much time on it in the book.I wanted to capture the imaginative beauty of Einstein's scientificleaps, but I hope folks who want to delve more deeply into the sciencewill read Einstein books by such scientists as Abraham Pais, JeremyBernstein, Brian Greene, and others.
Amazon.com: That Einstein was a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office when herevolutionized our understanding of the physical world has often beentreated as ironic or even absurd. But you argue that in many ways histime there fostered his discoveries. Could you explain?
Isaacson: I think he was lucky to be at the patent office rather than serving asan acolyte in the academy trying to please senior professors and teachthe conventional wisdom. As a patent examiner, he got to visualize thephysical realities underlying scientific concepts. He had a boss whotold him to question every premise and assumption. And as Peter Galisonshows in Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps, many of the patentapplications involved synchronizing clocks using signals that traveledat the speed of light. So with his office-mate Michele Besso as asounding 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 apractical scientist and tinkerer than the usual image of the wild-hairedprofessor, and more like your previous biographical subject, themultitalented but eminently earthly Benjamin Franklin. Did you seeconnections between them?
Isaacson: I like writing about creativity, and that's what Franklin and Einsteinshared. They also had great curiosity and imagination. But Franklin wasa more practical man who was not very theoretical, and Einstein was theopposite in that regard.
Amazon.com: Of the many legends that have accumulated around Einstein, what didyou find to be least true? Most true?
Isaacson: The least true legend is that he failed math as a schoolboy. He wasactually great in math, because he could visualize equations. He knewthey were nature's brushstrokes for painting her wonders. For example, hecould look at Maxwell's equations and marvel at what it would be like toride alongside a light wave, and he could look at Max Planck's equationsabout radiation and realize that Planck's constant meant that light wasa particle as well as a wave. The most true legend is how rebellious anddefiant of authority he was. You see it in his politics, his personallife, 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 thechance to get to know Einstein so well, did he remind you of anyone fromour day who shares at least some of his remarkable qualities?
Isaacson: There are many creative scientists, most notably Stephen Hawking, whowrote the essay on Einstein as "Person of the Century" when I was editorof Time. In the world of technology, Steve Jobs has the same creativeimagination and ability to think differently that distinguishedEinstein, and Bill Gates has the same intellectual intensity. I wish Iknew politicians who had the creativity and human instincts of Einstein,or for that matter the wise feel for our common values of BenjaminFranklin.
More to Explore
 Benjamin Franklin: An American Life |  Kissinger: A Biography |  The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made |
Product Description:
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.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- With Compass In Hand
While the story of Albert Einstein's insatiable curiosity seems to have begun with a compass, navigating through the landscape of his quixotic life may not be an enjoyable terrain when presented in certain ways.Walter Isaacson's biography does not overwhelm readers with scientific theories as to read like a physics book.Instead, it presents the right balance of science and the story of the man.
In reading the book, one of the most surprising themes is the anti-semitism faced by Einstein. ... Read More
Rating: - The best book I've read in years
Isaacson's writing style makes us feel like we know Einstein as he goes through his life. If you like Physics, Relativity, this won't be a dumbed down version. Indeed Walter Isaacson has effectively enticed the biography reader and the science reader interested.
Rating: 
- Balanced and Interesting Treatment
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Insightful, detailed, thorough and entertaining
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Smooth and compelling
Having read many good reviews of this biography, and not knowing much about Einstein beyond media sound bites, I'd been looking forward to this read.And it was satisfying.Isaacson provides a steady, linear narrative in smooth prose that follows Einstein from a rather unexceptional childhood through an odd but extraordinary early career (working in a patent office and on the fringes of academia while also having very normal struggles to establish a marriage and family) to a prolonged and fascinating period ... Read More
- With Compass In HandWhile the story of Albert Einstein's insatiable curiosity seems to have begun with a compass, navigating through the landscape of his quixotic life may not be an enjoyable terrain when presented in certain ways.Walter Isaacson's biography does not overwhelm readers with scientific theories as to read like a physics book.Instead, it presents the right balance of science and the story of the man.
In reading the book, one of the most surprising themes is the anti-semitism faced by Einstein. ... Read More
- The best book I've read in yearsIsaacson's writing style makes us feel like we know Einstein as he goes through his life. If you like Physics, Relativity, this won't be a dumbed down version. Indeed Walter Isaacson has effectively enticed the biography reader and the science reader interested.
- Balanced and Interesting TreatmentThis 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 ... Read More
- Insightful, detailed, thorough and entertainingAmazing 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 ... Read More
- Smooth and compellingHaving read many good reviews of this biography, and not knowing much about Einstein beyond media sound bites, I'd been looking forward to this read.And it was satisfying.Isaacson provides a steady, linear narrative in smooth prose that follows Einstein from a rather unexceptional childhood through an odd but extraordinary early career (working in a patent office and on the fringes of academia while also having very normal struggles to establish a marriage and family) to a prolonged and fascinating period ... Read More
