Five Questions for Walter IsaacsonĪ: What kind of scientific education did you have to give yourself to be able to understand and explain Einstein's ideas? Read 'The Light-Beam Rider,' the first chapter of Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe. Isaacson is a master of the form and this latest opus is at once arresting and wonderfully revelatory. 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. 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. 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.

'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.Īs a scientist, Albert Einstein is undoubtedly the most epic among 20th-century thinkers. 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. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. His fascinating story, a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom, reflects the triumphs and tumults of the modern era.īased on the newly-released papers and personal letters, 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 mindreader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe.

How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how the imagination that distinguished his science sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. 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.

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