Customer Reviews

Albert Einstein: Physicist and Genius (Great Minds of Science)

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Our 9 year old son brought this book home from the library, and now we're buying it for ourselves and as gifts. This book not only reads easily, and defines difficult words when needed, it gives the reader a look at Einstein's life, as well as explaining his revolutionary theories. We see how experiences in Einstein's personal life influenced his theories, and how his theories influenced history. Most important of all, I now understand the theory of relativity! The author does an excellent job of explaining Einstein's theories step by step, with simple pictures when needed. I have always wondered just how traveling at the speed of light could cause time to slow - that idea has never made sense to me, and no one has ever been able to explain it to me. Oh, how I wish Joyce Goldenstern could teach physics to all. This book is not only a must read, it is a must own for inquisitive adults, children, and parents of inquisitive children.

Although Einstein's basic life history and his theoretical concepts are reviewed moderately well for a child of about twelve, we found the book difficult to read due to the short and very choppy sentence structure. This writing style was very distracting to us as we tried to read this aloud to our children. Parent added dynamics and humor helped retain interest. Photos were only moderately relavent and the illustrations were actually mediocre quality black and white sketches.