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Einstein:: The Life and Times
by Ronald W. Clark
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Avon (1984-08-01)
ISBN: 038001159X
EAN: 9780380011599
Dewy Decimal #: 530.092
Mass Market Paperback: 880 pages
Release Date: 2001-01-01
SKU: T070736-4765
Condition: New
Comments: New Book. New condition. Ships same day or next in a bubble mailer. Enjoy,
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
WE SEE THE UNIVERSE THROUGH HIS EYES. Ronald W. Clark's definitive biography of Einstein, the Promethean figure of our age, goes behind the phenomenal intellect to reveal the human side of the legendary absent-minded professor who confidently claimed that space and time were not what they seemed. Here is the classic portrait of the scientist and the man: the boy growing up in the Swiss Alps, the young man caught in an unhappy first marriage, the passionate pacifist who agonized over making The Bomb, the indifferent Zionist asked to head the Israeli state, the physicist who believed in God.
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Customer Reviews
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BORING - too technical, too dry, not dramatic enough
Rating  (2)
Date: 2008-12-20
If I wanted to study physics again I would have taken another physics class. I was hoping to read a biography of Einstein, not an anatomy of his ideas. But the more I read of this supposed biography, the more I realized that Einstein didn't actually have much of a personal life beyond his physics ideas. Yes, there is some drama to his tale - becoming world famous as the physics genius, winning a Nobel Prize, being offered to lead Israel - but this book surely does not bring it out, and instead sinks into the quagmire of schizoid ideas. BORING.
The book's positives: incredibly well-researched, and clearly the author knows his physics...
But more on the negatives: I thought I would like Einstein after reading this book, and what I discovered instead is that I liked him less. He's a guy lost in boring, esoteric ideas that really, on a direct level, have little relevance to a healthy emotional life. Yes, people love to find the metaphorical relevance to his ideas, but frankly, I don't care for the guy much, don't care for his non-physics ideas, and don't really want to become much like him. No thanks!
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Einstein's Pacifism and the threat of Nazism
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-06-12
As a biography, this book is almost perfect. Every aspect of Einstein's life is covered with marvelous proportion and balance. If you want to understand the best-known scientist of modern times, you must read this book.
Perhaps most important of all, Clark does not write as if he were describing a saint. He recognizes that brilliance in one field doesn't always translate into brilliance in others. Politically, Einstein was often naive and sometimes silly. G. K. Chesterton noted that in May of 1931, shortly after Einstein had claimed, "If you can get two per cent of the population to assert in times of peace that they will not fight, you can end war." Chesterton replied, "But here the theorist asks us to believe, not merely that two men could fight a hundred men, but that a hundred men could not fight at all because two men were not fighting."
As the 1930s progressed, Einstein moved closer to Chesterton's views about war and particularly about the danger Germany posed to European peace. In the 1920s Einstein was one of the most famous pacifists in the world. In the 1930s, disturbed by Nazism, he abandoned his pacifism to advocate containment. The reason for his change was quite human. His loyalty to his own people, the Jews, triumphed over his intellectual dalliance with pacifism. Chesterton was no doubt delighted. He believe that healthy patriotism was the surest road to peace. Each people living on its own land and willing to defend it while respecting similar feelings among their neighbors recognized the human desire for attachments without avoiding the reality of evil. That's why the pacifist/internationalist solution, the League of Nations, failed to stop Nazism, while Chesterton's solution, a NATO-like military alliance, worked quite well to contain the even greater menace of Communism.
Unfortunately, while Chesterton, a popular English writer, would sometimes comment on the much better known Einstein, and somewhere Einstein may have mentioned Chesterton, a fellow Zionist, I can find no evidence the two every met. Given that both had a marvelous, self-effacing sense of humor, that's unfortunate.
--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II
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Nazism and Einstein's pacifism
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-06-12
As a biography, this book is almost perfect. Every aspect of Einstein's life is covered with marvelous proportion and balance. If you want to understand the best-known scientist of modern times, you must read this book.
Perhaps most important of all, Clark does not write as if he were describing a saint. He recognizes that brilliance in one field doesn't always translate into brilliance in others. Politically, Einstein was often naive and sometimes silly. G. K. Chesterton noted that in May of 1931, shortly after Einstein had claimed, "If you can get two per cent of the population to assert in times of peace that they will not fight, you can end war." Chesterton replied, "But here the theorist asks us to believe, not merely that two men could fight a hundred men, but that a hundred men could not fight at all because two men were not fighting."
As the 1930s progressed, Einstein moved closer to Chesterton's views about war and particularly about the danger Germany posed to European peace. In the 1920s Einstein was one of the most famous pacifists in the world. In the 1930s, disturbed by Nazism, he abandoned his pacifism to advocate containment. The reason for his change was quite human. His loyalty to his own people, the Jews, triumphed over his intellectual dalliance with pacifism. Chesterton was no doubt delighted. He believe that healthy patriotism was the surest road to peace. Each people living on its own land and willing to defend it while respecting similar feelings among their neighbors recognized the human desire for attachments without avoiding the reality of evil. That's why the pacifist/internationalist solution, the League of Nations, failed to stop Nazism, while Chesterton's solution, a NATO-like military alliance, worked quite well to contain the even greater menace of Communism.
Unfortunately, while Chesterton, a popular English writer, would sometimes comment on the much better known Einstein, and somewhere Einstein may have mentioned Chesterton, a fellow Zionist, I can find no evidence the two every met. Given that both had a marvelous, self-effacing sense of humor, that's unfortunate.
--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II
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red-shifted
Rating (2)
Date: 2007-12-12
3 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Prepare to feel time slow down if you approach this black hole of a book.
The thesis of Einstein: The Life and Times is that Albert Einstein was both the preeminent physicist of our age and a saint.
The first claim - Einstein's genius - is manifestly true. Einstein single-handedly established four of the foundational principles of modern physics (statistical mechanics, space-time equivalence, photon quantization, and the covariant formulation of gravitation). But Ronald Clark fails to make the case for genius, preferring in every case to document contemporary opinions rather than share the scientific excitement of the discoveries themselves. In this sense, Clark was intellectually incompetent to be Einstein's biographer.
The second claim, sainthood, is manifestly false. Einstein is consistently described by his friends as inconsiderate, socially inept, and self-centered. His life after 1920 was a scientific wasteland - because of his self-imposed isolation. Outside of physics, his opinions were inconsistent, shallow, and readily manipulated. This biographer, with his frequent Socialist and anti-American embellishments, is just another in a long line of Einstein manipulators.
In spite of Clark's incessant emphasis on Einstein as sui generis, the most consistent theme that emerges from the documentation of his life is the saintliness of other scientists. His fellow physicists deserve credit for recognizing, promulgating, proving, developing, and rewarding Einstein's ideas - and protecting him personally - in spite of the impediments of his personality. It's no wonder that Einstein could maintain such rose-colored pacifism when he lived off of the emotional and financial largess of the international scientific community.
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One of the great biographies of all time
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-09-24
8 out of 8 customers found this reveiw helpful
Whenever they compile the list of the best biographies of the 20th Century, this book will definitely be on the short list. It's a masterpiece. Clark presents a thorough, erudite, and accessible account of Einstein's life and work. He begins by relating Einstein's early struggles and his years at the Swiss Patent Office, where he read and analyzed technical reports. Then came the great relativity theory and the subsequent success and reknown. The flight from Nazi Germany to Princeton, the building of the atomic bomb during WW II (he regretted this association the most in his life), and the myths that developed around his life with the public (he hated the public adulation; when he died he didn't want his house on Mercer Street in Princeton to become a shrine) also get their fair and judicious treatment. Einstein was a great scientist who had developed some of the most complicated theories in physics, and Clark is excellent in trying to explain them for the general reader. But he is best when capturing Einstein the man. Clark writes with the confidence of a master, even majestically. It's a long book and not a fast read, but the time spent with Clark and his magnificent subject is time very well spent. One even wishes for more at the end. A brilliant work.
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