EINSTEIN (Heroes of the Mind)

Short, but very good. Enjoyed!

Amazing graphic biography. Strongly recommended.

There isn't much here in the way of physics, apart from a fairly perfunctory treatment of Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, but that's O.K. The book more or less takes as a given the reader's awareness of Einstein's scientific contributions, and focuses on looking behind that to sketch out a much fuller biography than most readers would expect.Einstein was a complex and private man who played the role of public genius to perfection. The book cleverly builds Einstein's most famous quotes into the narrative and into his speech balloons, ("God does not play dice with the universe", and so on). Especially important, and sort of remarkable, it even puts these quotes in their proper context. For example the God-and-dice quote was a summation of Einstein's rejection of the uncertainty principle underlying quantum physics, not a religious statement. That becomes crystal clear in the book.What we really see is hints about Einstein the man. He was a terrible husband, a flirt and a serial philanderer. He was uninvolved in his own family. His personal life, practically from birth until his death, was messy, complicated and tangled. You get that from this book. Professionally, Einstein enjoyed praise and recognition, and could feud bitterly; you get hints of that as well. As one of the world's first intellectual celebrities, he learned how to charm, avoid and manipulate the popular press, and you get that as well.The upshot is that this is no hagiography and we don't get an idealized Saint Einstein. What we get is much more interesting. And, oddly enough, the graphic book format is a great way to introduce this Einstein. I don't want to read 450 pages of letters, diary entries and reminiscences from acquaintances. I want a brisk introduction and eye-opener, and that's what you get here.(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Excellent graphic biography on Einstein focusing on his Theory of Relativity. I've read the book on Marx which the author wrote in this series and had great expectations for this one which were thoroughly realised. An amazing amount of information has been conveyed and takes a look all facets of Einstein: his accomplishments, his detractors, his personality and his weaknesses (mainly philandering). The story is told from Einstein's point of view with him hovering over as perhaps his old self or "ghost", all-knowingly telling his tale with hindsight. Many famous Einstein quips can be found amongst the dialogue and it is both informative and entertaining. An excellent addition to Maier's series of biographies on (so far) great 20th century minds.