Customer Reviews

Einstein: The Passions of a Scientist

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This book does an excellent job of telling the life of Einstein. The author, Barry Parker takes many accounts of his life and sums them all up into one book. The author was compelled to write about Einstein because of how important he was to our understanding of physics. I highly recommened this story because unlike most biographies this one throws in some humor, which keeps you interested. Also, this book not only talks about Einstein's many achievements but also takes you into his younger years. This book is also short so if you are interested in Einstein but do not want to read a 500 page book about him pick this one up. This book also includes many photographs and drawings of his early years and of people who influenced him in his life. My favorite fact of this book is that Einstein was not only interested in math and physics, but also enjoyed playing music.

The only negative part of this story is some of the chapters feel out of place. Parker begins to jump around near the end. Other then that it is an excellent read.

I have just read "Einstein: The Passions of a Scientist" and found it to be most informative and entertaining. I have always been curious about Einstein, what kind of a person he was, what his interests were outside of science. Mr. Parker, in fine style, certainly answers those questions and more. He has a very arresting way of capturing Einstein's personality. Mr. Parker has a writing style that I find particularly easy to read and understand, a rare quality amongst science writers. Congratulations Mr. Parker for a book that not only held my complete attention throughout, but was also entertaining and educational. Geoff Pearson, Jacksonville, N.C.

This book provides some entertaining anecdotes about Einstein's life. I'm never certain as to how far one can trust such anecdotes, but they are fun to hear about anyway. However, this is one of the most poorly written books I have ever read. The typographical, grammatical, and spelling errors are rampant throughout the entire read. I wonder if there was no editor involved with the project whatsoever. For example, he writes at one point about a young woman named Suzanne, and within the same paragraph he mistakenly refers to her as Susan. The sentences are very poorly constructed, very redundant compositionally, and overall written as if from a sixth-grade point-of-view. The author's skill is clearly not a literary one, and he should have collaborated with a writer who knew what they were doing. The errors are so frequent, that it becomes difficult to trust what's written -- if you encountered a fact that seems puzzling, it is easy to brush it off as another typo. I was a bit embarrassed and insulted to find myself reading such low-level writing. But the book doesn't entirely fail, since it still leaves you with some nice feelings about Einstein.

When most people think of Albert Einstein, they think only in terms of his older years. Parker's book takes the reader through his early years, some of which were quite stressful. Like most great musicians and artists he was quite poor when young. Also, his stubborness got him in trouble in school all the way through college. Parker's book is well written and depicts Einstein's trouble with things such as mathematics and having to write serveral theses for his doctorate before one was accepted. This book describes some of Albert's passions such as a love for physics, playing the violin, hiking, sailing and women.

If you didn't know much about the personal side of Einstein you do now. The book was stimulating, and has enlightened us to the human side of his persona. From his marriages and love of woman to his love of classical music he comes alive once again. Without finding all the answers he search for in his physics pursuits, he had many other faucets that shed a new light on who he was as a man, and not just a brillliant scientist. Wonderful book!

I recall when I was a kid reading a piece in the Reader's Digest about "Mrs. Einstein" being interviewed by the press. "Do you understand the theory of relativity, Mrs. Einstein?" a reporter is said to have asked. "No," she demurely if rather smugly replied, "but I understand Mr. Einstein." Ha! Author Barry Parker, in "Einstein, the Passions of a Scientist" blows her cover. This was a man whose passionate interests were not limited to whether space was curved, and it is unlikely that either his first wife or his second was aware of the scope of his love life. In his lively and informative biography of the greatest scientist of our age, Barry Parker brings the man alive with a fascinating look at his personal life, as well as his intellectual one. A great read.