Customer Reviews

The Einstein Almanac

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This fine book is essentially a chronological bibliography of Einstein's writings. While not exhaustive (Calaprice uses the word "selected"), this book provides a good real glimpse into what Einstein actually thought and researched and wrote as a scientist, philosopher and humanist from 1901-1955. Serious fans of Einstein (like myself) who don't have the multi-volume Collected Papers of Albert Einstein at arm's length will find this little book quite useful. Here you find the titles of articles, papers, essays, and even interviews accompanied by the originals in German (where appropriate). Descriptive or explanatory comments follow most of them. Did you know that Einstein studied the meandering of rivers? He wrote some illuminating papers on this geological question. Or that he and Leo Szilard patented home refrigeration by the "Einstein-Szilard pump"? Most standard biographies wouldn't mention these. But an Einstein almanac might. This one does. (The important scientific papers are of course not neglected.)

To place Einstein's life in context, Calaprice includes many historical and scientific events - some of which bear only a remote relevance to Einstein. I personally think these can be replaced by more biographical info. For example, what James Watson and Murray Gell-Mann did, while interesting and important, hardly merit entry into an Einstein Almanac. What Otto Hahn did is more relevant and may be included. There are other books on the history of science in the twentieth century and even more on the history of historical events. My idea of an Einstein almanac would exclude anything not directly related or relevant to Einstein. If it were up to me, any event not directly involving Einstein I would ruthlesssly exclude.

This is my main humble criticism (and my own opinion). One other shortcoming is that few personal letters are included. But this is quite understandable because letters don't usually carry titles. Also, Einstein wrote so many letters in his lifetime that to list them all and summarize them with comments would be a herculean task. For letters, interested students should refer to the CPAE. But I think a separate chapter on the most important letters Einstein wrote might be a good idea for the next edition (if any). Some of Einstein's most incisive thoughts are found in his letters (such as those to Max Born) and a brief overview of these may be useful.

One more suggestion for improvement (bear with me) might be a detailed timeline of Einstein's life. Timelines differ in details. Very extensive and all-inclusive timelines provide a virtually day-by-day chronology. One outstanding example of these would be University of Delaware professor Leo Lemay's Documentary History of Benjamin Franklin, which is an on-going project available on the Web. It gives impressive details of what Franklin was doing and where he was doing it on numerous specific dates. Calaprice's other books about Einstein already have brief timelines. An Einstein Almanac could use a very detailed one. (This book also has a brief timeline of Einstein's early years - but then again not all the details seem to me relevant. A lot of things happened in 1895 for Einstein, but I see no point in mentioning the invention of the Gillette razor, for instance, because this has nothing to do with Einstein, whether or not he used one.) Just listing all of Einstein's personal and scientific activities, rather than non-Einstein events, can be a worthwhile if lengthy task. But an almanac is designed to be full of dates.

Leave out the fat of irrelevant non-Einstein stuff, and build more muscle of Einstein-exclusive matters, and this book could be even better and more useful than it already is. If this book is also an on-going project, then there is room for growth on what is in my view an excellent basis.