Einstein: His Life and Universe

I liked learning about his life and what he did for fun. This was an amazing book. It went well with me after reading The Black Swan. Similar stuff in a way. [...]

A wonderful biography of a unique, fascinating and enthralling person. The author brings freshness to this much-written subject by drawing on voluminous personal correspondence that remained sealed for 50 years following Einstein's death. The book is a remarkable achievement by being both highly readable and accessible, and providing scientifically sound explanations for the lay person of complex concepts of physics. As a history of science, of the early 20th century, and as a perspective on one of the most engaging and innovative personalities ever, this book is total education and refreshment. Especially moving is the fundamental thread of Einstein's personality as a lifelong quest for unifying principles, married to unsentimental devotion to reason, logic and a faith in the comprehensibility of the universe. (Good luck with that one.)

I had a mild interest in reading about Einstein, but frankly put off reading this biography for the simple reason that it seemed thicker than my interest. But what a wonderful read it is. Isaacson does a graceful job of keeping the pace moving, and an estimable job of explaining the science (to us non-scientists) without letting it bog down the story.
And, quite simply, Einstein is also a fascinating person to read about, especially his later life as an internationalist and world icon. Highly recommended.

Very interesting book. Easy to understand. A fascinating overview of WWI and WWII. Well-written, informative and enjoyable to read. Hard to put down.

Isaacson's biography comes in at 551 pages in the hardcover edition. Given the heft, if you want to hit a demographic of more general readers, you better offer more than just Einstein's contributions to science. Isaacson nails this higher standard by offering an Einstein who is an archetypical freethinker of Western Civilization in the twentieth century, providing the reader a personal glimpse into the technological, cultural, religious, and political movements that drove that century.

After quickly moving through Einstein's youth where Isaacson destroys many of the falsehoods regarding Einstein as a child supposedly not showing much promise; Isaacson then focuses much of the first part of the book on Einstein's development of the theory of general relativity and his development of relationships within the scientific community that allows him to work on a broad array of issues within theoretical physics, but also partnering with others on engineering projects as well. This part of the book will reward those primarily interested in better understanding the creation and progression of the theories in which Einstein contributed his expertise.

I would also recommend that readers monitor the online website sciencedailydotcom as they read this book. I was amazed at how many times news stories cropped up confirming some aspect of Einstein's arguments that Einstein was forced to infer or was weakly validated with evidence given the lack of modern day equipment. It's impressive to track what is mostly the validation of his arguments but also the occasional falsification with additional empirical evidence we are now collecting.

Isaacson explains the science so any high school student who passed physics can easily understand. For those that are not at that level, I still recommend reading the book since Isaacson serves it up in fairly small doses and concentrates much of it in the earlier part of the book, plus the explanations are simple enough anyone should understand some of the more major findings. This part of the book is a bit of dry read, but will serve the reader as a useful resource for future reference. I've probably got about 50 notations I marked on especially illuminating topics.

I found the last part of the book that focused on the non-scientific aspects of Einstein's life particularly interesting and well worth the investment in time given the size of the book. I'm not sure Isaacson consciously decided to make Einstein an archetypical freethinker of the twentieth century, but I've never read about a more worthy candidate to view the development of liberalism and its resultant benefits in the twentieth century with the possible exception of FDR. In fact, I would view FDR as the leader of the movement and Einstein as a perfect example legitimizing why we should strive for liberal democracies, especially given Einstein's fellow scientists' contributions to weaponry used against Germany, where most of these fellows resided prior to the rise of Nazism.

I was very impressed with how quickly Einstein was able to develop strong positions regarding his beliefs in politics, religion, and economics, starting in his early teens where he quickly realized the logical absurdities of organized religion. What has taken me decades to develop in regards to my core principles Einstein developed within a few short years as he takes on these topics. Besides being an especially prescient thinker about these issues, Isaacson's Einstein held positions that were often solidified well before such positions were popular. His positions were consistently predictive; where Einstein willingly discarded certain core beliefs if the evidence argued heavily against it - just like any good scientist does by constantly attempting to falsify their theories with the best opposing arguments.

A great example is how Einstein perceived the threat Nazism posed to Germany well before most people realized they were a threat to anyone, which caused Einstein to emigrate from Germany in the very early 1930's while many of his Jewish scientific colleagues stayed behind at that time, though many got out a few years after. By that time Einstein was a well-known pacifist, having been very outspoken about World War I, however when Germany started invading their neighbors and the war drums started pounding for a new world war, Einstein's fellow pacifists were shockingly disappointed that Einstein wisely discarded his pacifism and supported the free world using force against Germany, showing that Einstein was no blind ideologue even for his closely held beliefs.

Isaacson's freethinking Einstein doesn't just address the positive aspects employed by freethinking and secularism, but also the social risks that occur as traditional institutions like the sanctity of marriage and family if they are separated from the fear of ostracization by one's religious community - a non-factor for the secular Einstein. Isaacson's Einstein is an incredibly selfish husband and father to the point of effectively disowning a son though no fault of the son's.

Many of the sources used to report on Einstein's life were published for the first time in this book given the release of a huge cache of correspondence between Einstein and others that was owned by the family and never offered to previous biographers. Here we see a more humanized Einstein, even though his humanity always was evident during his life and subsequent biographies. There is also an almost comedic storyline regarding the ineptness of FBI surveillance against the perfectly harmless Einstein, with a kicker regarding Einstein's relationship with a spy that I won't elaborate on here since I view it as a spoiler. The spy story was never told in previous biographies given that a subject country just released its files on Einstein just prior to Isaacson starting this book.

Some of this new documentation also provides Isaacson the opportunity to effectively discredit a favorite meme going around in social conservative circles that Einstein was sympathetic to their beliefs in the existence of a creationist / intelligent designer providential God who fine-tuned the universe. Isaacson goes for the jugular and discredits any notion this falsehood is true. A certain creationist cretin named Ray Comfort, who is working with an ex-TV child actor, actually claims he is the next Einstein and this is getting a lot of traction with social conservatives. Given that social conservatives have been actively and massively involved in historical revisionism regarding Western Civilization and their role in it, Isaacson's focus on Einstein's religious beliefs was most welcomed by me to set the record straight to attempt to rebut this effort.

Isaacson dedicates a full chapter on Einstein's god after first explaining in another full chapter Einstein's perception of the Universe. Isaacson's reportage is nuanced and perfectly constructs and deconstructs many of Einstein's communications on these matters, some of which often appeared contradictory unless one understood how Einstein used certain terms and framed some of his perceptions regarding reality. For example, Einstein occasionally claimed to be religious, but his use of the term meant the challenge to obtain knowledge beyond what science knew regarding the underlying forces of the universe, and not blind faith in religious dogma that one could never know and therefore "God must of have done it".

As a summary, if one wants to better understand the twentieth century in terms of how we progressed from zero liberal democracies in 1900 to one hundred and twenty countries coupled with incredible progress in understanding the universe and leveraging that knowledge in technology leaps that is difficult to comprehend even looking backward; than Isaacson's Einstein provides the perfect archetype from which to view that progress at a more personal level. Einstein's approach to thinking and responding to societal issues will certainly now personally serve as a model for me on how to view civilization just like I was influenced by John Locke, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Crick & Watson, Gates, Jobs, Venter, and soon I hope, Obama. Therefore I am grateful this book was written and I invested the time to learn from it.