June 1, 2023
Science editor at the Times Literary Supplement, Graydon emulates Craig Brown's 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret to offer a different approach to Albert Einstein with Einstein in Time and Place, revealing him in unique moments as slacker student, ladies man, life of the party, and genius neighbor-next-door. Prepub Alert.
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September 11, 2023
Graydon, the science editor at the Times Literary Supplement, debuts with an insightful compendium of “short chapters of varying styles that deal with a particular moment or aspect of Einstein’s life.” The vignettes explore the Nobel Prize winner’s career, discussing how a 1905 conversation with engineer and friend Michele Angelo Besso helped Einstein crack his theory of relativity and how the physicist’s unsuccessful attempts to develop a “theory of everything” toward the end of his life alienated him from skeptical colleagues. Other entries focus on Einstein’s personal life, discussing his distaste for alcohol, the mystery of what happened to his daughter Lieserl (Graydon suggests she may have died from scarlet fever when she was 19 months old, or else was given up for adoption, since Einstein had not yet married her mother), and the affairs Einstein pursued during both of his marriages. Some selections are substantial and cover Einstein’s theories and his response to the Nazi takeover of his native Germany, while others are more pithy—“particle” 14 consists of a single paragraph on the health examination that found Einstein “unfit to serve” in Switzerland’s army after he became a citizen in 1901. It adds up to a competent whistle-stop tour of Einstein’s life.
September 15, 2023
A new entry in the crowded field of books about Einstein takes an impressionistic approach. Graydon, science editor of the Times Literary Supplement, presents a "mosaic biography...composed of short chapters of varying styles that deal with a particular moment or aspect of Einstein's life." Born to a prosperous, nonobservant German Jewish family, Einstein was, despite popular legend, probably a prodigy, which guaranteed difficulties in the rigid German and Swiss educational systems. By the time he entered college, he was fascinated by and highly accomplished in mathematics and physics, preoccupied by unsolved problems involving space, time, gravity, and light. Professorships in theoretical physics were rare in 1901, so it's no surprise that he didn't get one, but his patent office job paid well, made use of his scientific training, and gave him time to write papers that appeared in Europe's leading physics journal even before the miraculous four published in 1905. Establishment scientists noticed, but matters moved slowly. He entered academia and rose steadily, occupying a prominent position in Berlin. He hit the jackpot in 1919 with his proof of general relativity, which enraptured the media and made him the world's most famous scientist. Since his death in 1955, historians have turned up mildly unflattering material (an illegitimate child, some racism), but no revisionist biography has gained traction. Scholars tend to agree that Einstein's discoveries were history's most significant scientific achievements. Graydon's research emphasizes secondary sources; perhaps the book's outstanding feature is the extensive, opinionated bibliography, but those who choose this as their introduction to Einstein will not regret the experience--even though the author passes quickly over the science. Readers searching for a careful layperson's explanation of relativity will find them in biographies by Abraham Pais and Dennis Overbye. No one should pass through life without reading a biography of the immortal physicist, and this one will do fine.
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