Pleasantly surprised by the nature of this book, I divide this telling of Albert Einstein's remarkable life (as one will certainly agree following a thorough perusal of these pages) into three parts. The first is biography. A person may argue the entire book is biography, and such a stand would not be far from the complete truth. However, what Walter Isaacson manages to accomplish in telling the story of Einstein that goes beyond a mere recitation of life events is he includes levels of dimension to the man's existence.
In other words, mankind is three-dimensional. Isaacson acknowledges that by not merely telling of the brilliant scientist who gave the world the Theory of Relativity and E=MC2; he also tells of the desirous, yet failed, family man who never succeeded in becoming the father to his children. Brilliance and Failure in one package. Such a presentation gives even the most common of us hope.
This lack, as Isaacson demonstrates in his narrative, opened perhaps the most sterling trait of Einstein's character, the one characteristic most overlooked and probably most prevalent in making his the character of history who even lives today. This was his stunning ability to learn from his mistakes and grow beyond them. The Einstein of the early 1900s was not the Einstein of the 1940s and 50s.
He was a man who knew clearly how to adapt to his environment and modify his views as new information became available. How else can it be explained the man of pure pacifism also being the impetus to the development of the atomic bomb?
The second part to this dimensional study of Albert Einstein is that of Einstein's science. Though my mind is far from being hardwired in the vernacular of scientific understanding, listening to Einstein's theories explained, though understanding of them did not follow, there was an element to them causing me to believe, with a touch more effort on my part, a few more moment in pondering what the man stated, comprehension would be possible. It just required an ounce of more effort. Just a little more time.
Other scientists of his era (as well as what I have heard for my own time) it all sails clean over my non-scientific understanding brain. I don't even care to try an attempt to understand. It's all a foreign language absent the Rosetta Stone to begin a decipher.
But with Einstein - he is the Rosetta Stone. Understanding is within any soul's grasp who makes a small extra ounce of effort.
Insatiable curiosity. That is what Isaacson brings out as Einstein's main skill. For the soul who never gives up asking questions, here lies our current days' progenitor to that skill. Only Einstein, with his insatiably curioous mind, affable manner, clearly human behavior could make such the undecipherable within the common person's reach
Not so his contemporaries. Whenever their theories were given place, that is when my eyes glazed over and my thoughts drifted. Their science, in this one reader’s view, universally failed to extend the same hope for comprehension, as did Einstein’s. He presented what he thought in a way that caused me to think; and any book that manages to convey that message is well worth anyone’s time.
In other words, mankind is three-dimensional. Isaacson acknowledges that by not merely telling of the brilliant scientist who gave the world the Theory of Relativity and E=MC2; he also tells of the desirous, yet failed, family man who never succeeded in becoming the father to his children. Brilliance and Failure in one package. Such a presentation gives even the most common of us hope.
This lack, as Isaacson demonstrates in his narrative, opened perhaps the most sterling trait of Einstein's character, the one characteristic most overlooked and probably most prevalent in making his the character of history who even lives today. This was his stunning ability to learn from his mistakes and grow beyond them. The Einstein of the early 1900s was not the Einstein of the 1940s and 50s.
He was a man who knew clearly how to adapt to his environment and modify his views as new information became available. How else can it be explained the man of pure pacifism also being the impetus to the development of the atomic bomb?
The second part to this dimensional study of Albert Einstein is that of Einstein's science. Though my mind is far from being hardwired in the vernacular of scientific understanding, listening to Einstein's theories explained, though understanding of them did not follow, there was an element to them causing me to believe, with a touch more effort on my part, a few more moment in pondering what the man stated, comprehension would be possible. It just required an ounce of more effort. Just a little more time.
Other scientists of his era (as well as what I have heard for my own time) it all sails clean over my non-scientific understanding brain. I don't even care to try an attempt to understand. It's all a foreign language absent the Rosetta Stone to begin a decipher.
But with Einstein - he is the Rosetta Stone. Understanding is within any soul's grasp who makes a small extra ounce of effort.
Insatiable curiosity. That is what Isaacson brings out as Einstein's main skill. For the soul who never gives up asking questions, here lies our current days' progenitor to that skill. Only Einstein, with his insatiably curioous mind, affable manner, clearly human behavior could make such the undecipherable within the common person's reach
Not so his contemporaries. Whenever their theories were given place, that is when my eyes glazed over and my thoughts drifted. Their science, in this one reader’s view, universally failed to extend the same hope for comprehension, as did Einstein’s. He presented what he thought in a way that caused me to think; and any book that manages to convey that message is well worth anyone’s time.
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