Einstein: The Life of a Genius

While most everyone thinks of the absentminded professor, E=mc2, or general relativity when the name Albert Einstein comes up, Isaacson (CEO, Aspen Inst.; Steve Jobs) wants readers to remember the human being behind the 20th-century revolutions of space-time and quantum mechanics. To this end, the author juxtaposes a light biography of Einstein (1879–1955) with artifacts from the great physicist's life: photographs, letters, postcards and the like, grounding this ethereal mind in the material world. Also included are brief introductions to individuals who had a major role in the subject's life as well as to major intellectual, social, and political developments of his time. While much of the work reads as hagiography, Isaacson particularly succeeds in rounding out the man when he discusses Einstein's growing interest in nuclear disarmament and civil rights and through the letters that are included—whereas the author may gloss over Einstein's poor treatment of his first, abandoned child, or his cruelty with his first wife, the physicist's letters demonstrate his occasional coldness and solipsism.