Plot Summary
Einstein: His Life and Universe was written by Walter Isaacson, author of biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger, and Steve Jobs.
Isaacson unpacks the life of the mind of this creative and monumental genius, Einstein–the man who embodied the 20th century scientific spirit. Both anecdote and theory are covered with fluidity as are the questions of what made Einstein the brilliant mind with which we are so familiar? How did his mental processes operate? Isaacson reveals how his rebellious nature, his creativity unbridled, fed his scientific imagination and hunger to reinvent stale concepts.
With correspondence just released, we also rediscover a father, a husband and a patent clerk who struggled in his personal relationships and could not find employment teaching. Yet we find this is the same man, the locksmith, seemingly holding the keys to the mysteries of the quantum universe. His free spirit and his marvel drove him to question conventional wisdom. A gadfly on the back of others less flexible and forward thinking, Einstein bothered and bored his peers, yet these values or, some would say, personality characteristics, are the same which make Einstein so relevant, and inspiring, for our century. Indeed, Isaacson makes clear that in an era where our lives are far more integrated than ever before, we need a dose of Einstein’s spirit, wisdom, and love of creative freedom.
Walter Isaacson is a writer and biographer born in 1952 in New Orleans, Louisiana. First a journalist, later a political correspondent, managing editor of Time and eventual a chairman and CEO of CNN, he is currently president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization. He is chairman emeritus for Teach for America, and was selected as Time’s 100 most influential people of the world for 2012.
“I loved listening to the audio read, narrated by Edward Herrmann of Walter Isaacson’s biography on Einstein: His Life and Universe. Einstein lived during some of the most complex decades of humankind. I greatly appreciate how in his brilliancy, he remained humble, humorous, passionate, concerned for social justice, sane, independent in his thinking, work and vision despite the upheavals throughout his life, including WWI and WWII. Although I have very little interest in theoretical physics, I do understand and relate to a type of his passionate spirit to seek what holds the universe together and to not conform (blindly or mindlessly) to those in power, status, wealth and/or authority. I would not be surprised if a generation or mass group of followers rise up in the ‘spirit of Einstein’ to promote their new era cause for world peace using some of his quotes on why all nations need one collective world government to oversee controlling nuclear arms. Time will tell.”
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Kim (5 out of 5 stars)
Publisher Summary
The definitive, internationally bestselling biography of Albert Einstein. Now the basis of Genius, the ten-part National Geographic series on the life of Albert Einstein, starring the Oscar, Emmy, and Tony Award–winning actor Geoffrey Rush as Einstein.
How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson’s biography shows how Einstein’s scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom. Einstein 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.
Einstein, the classic #1 New York Times bestseller, is a brilliantly acclaimed account of the most influential scientist of the twentieth century, “an illuminating delight” (The New York Times). The basis for the National Geographic series Genius, by the author of The Innovators, Steve Jobs, and Benjamin Franklin, this is the definitive biography of Albert Einstein.
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