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Einstein: His Life and Universe | 
 enlarge | Author: Walter Isaacson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $10.90
You Save: $7.05 (39%)
New (38) Used (13) from $8.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  206 reviews
Sales Rank: 3322
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 704
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 2
ISBN: 0743264746
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.092
EAN: 9780743264747
ASIN: 0743264746
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
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.
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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: Read 201 more reviews...
 HIS ENDLESS CURIOSITY August 20, 2008
Isn't it amazing what a person can accomplish with quiet little "thought experiments" while looking out the window from a job that does not absorb all of the intellect and imagination? Isn't it also interesting that Einstein's best work was accomplished early in his career when he was struggling economically and involved in a tumultuous marriage? Perhaps it shows that a great intellect can function by detaching itself from the noise of daily life. Perhaps the subconscious mind is the source of the greatest thoughts.
Contrary our unfortunate tendency to consider Einstein only for his brain, Isaacson's book focuses on the humanity of the Professor, including his struggles, failures, odd quirks and ideas, and endless curiosity. In an age of mindless entertainment, how much we need people with minds that are vitally interested in peeling away the next layer of mystery enveloping the universe! If Einstein had one passion, it was just to understand how the entire mechanism of creation works from the sub-atomic to the inter-galactic. If Einstein had one unique talent, it was his irreverence for conventional thinking and a special ability to see and visualize from an entirely new viewpoint. His unconventionality ultimately made him successful AND endearing.
Isaacson's biography is well-worth reading and then sharing with a friend who also has a spark of curiosity about the man and his place in scientific and popular history. Einstein was a man of peace who loved sailing and music, yet in many chapters of his life peace eluded him due to events beyond his control. The reader can sympathize with Einstein when his last great quest for a unified field theory continued to elude him (despite newspaper headlines that he was on the verge of a breakthrough) and his health failed him while equations continued to flow from his pen. I hope his life story will encourage a new generation of thinkers to follow imaginations and never lose their curiosity. Debra Lawrence, Author of THE 3:00 PM SECRET: Live Slim and Strong, Live Your Dreams
 Wish I had purchased the unabridged version! August 16, 2008
I enjoyed this immensely, but found myself wishing that I had gotten the unabridged version. The narrative would cut off before fully covering the topic at hand, and sometimes I would find myself deep into a subject that needed more introduction. I am sure the full version would have avoided these issues. Otherwise, it was an intriguing story -- so much so that I ordered the printed version to allow me to get the whole story.
Great Listening For Your Commute August 14, 2008
If anyone out there is similar to me in trying to find ways to utilize the time spent commuting back and forth to work the 18 CD audio version of Einstein is just the ticket. I am neither an Einstein expert or neophyte but was in fact just interested in expanding on my core knowledge and world/american history. I can fervently admit I have achieved both having just completed the final CD. You will no doubt find a number of reviews contained herein debating the pros and cons of this body of work by Isaacson. This collection of CD's is a no-brainer. Wonderful information intelligently read aloud by Edward Herrmann covering the entire life of one of the world's most enlightened thinkers. Don't hesitate to purchase it - it is worth every dollar.
An Excellent New Portrait August 11, 2008
Enough time has passed that a popular book was perhaps needed to turn the icon back into the man. It is a challenge to say something new about Einstein the man, and perhaps it is enough for Isaacson to shine the light of inquiry at a few new angles. Purists will appreciate the copious footnoting, but most readers will just enjoy letting the author present the material in an orderly, clear, and engaging manner. It is not possible to read the book (and enjoy the old photos) without feeling that you have made at least a good acquaintance with Prof. Einstein.
In my distant youth, I was led to believe that only a few elite scientists actually understood Einstein's major theoretical breakthroughs, but this author is able to explain them well enough to the layman reader that he or she won't feel entirely left out. The book may inspire a few to pick up the quest for a unified field theory, but for most of us the effect will be simply a greater understanding and appreciation of the individual, his times, and his many important impacts on our world. It is particularly interesting to watch the essentially pacifist scientists with a "world citizen" viewpoint confront the irrefutable evil of the persecution and murder of Jew and others. Ultimately, however, Einstein proves that nobody is a genius at everything (including affairs of the heart), and he never seems to realize the implicit danger in one-world government.
I see this book as having great value to anyone with deep roots in the 20th century, but even more value to young people (high school or older) who need to understand Einstein's life and times as context for today's world.
 Held my interest for a while. August 9, 2008
I read about 1/2 of the book, getting to the time of his life where he generated his historic theories about relativity. It was generally interesting, but I moved on to other books instead of finishing.
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