Customer Reviews

Einstein's Mirror

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

At last, a book that explains Einstein's Theories of Relativity in a concise, interesting and entertaining way. The book maps out the history of physics from the ancient Greeks to Richard Feynman with interesting and whimsical anecdotes about the people who try to figure out how things work. Well illustrated, even my mother will "Get It" Be sure to pick up the companion book "The Quantum Universe" I never thought Relativity could be light reading.

I could say that this one is a book that achieves a happy, delicate balance between lightness and heaviness. But why?
In numbers: 291 pages, eleven chapters, one appendix,
a glossary and, more important, hundreds of pictures with small
comments that sometimes are biographies. This makes it "greater in quantity or quality than the average of its kind or class".
But be sure, it is not a book
only for those wanting to learn relativity and, also, it is not an
Einstein's biography: it complements both with a lot of general
information. The final chapter, "Relativity and science fiction",
though not very complete, gives to the book a special taste.
In brief: it makes a good companion to Kip Thorne's "Black holes
and time warps" (cited in the book as a suggestion
for further reading) and a very good (light, as it should be)
introduction to Einstein's life and work and its influence
in our culture.

This book contains a brief overview of Einstien's special and general theories of relativity, combined with historical accounts of his life and his scientific progression. If you read this book, you will no doubt have a list of topics and physicists names that you will be googling. I bought maybe 5 books after reading this one because many fascinating topics are brought up. Excellent general summary of Einstein and his work.

Well written for the non-professional scientist.