Customer Reviews

The Ultimate Einstein HC

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This is the only book and CD-ROM set authorized by the Einstein estate. It is just GREAT! The book is well written, informative and accurate. The CD-ROM is filled with video and sound clips with Albert Einstein from the historic archives and contains thought experiments, virtual reality laboratory that demonstrates the effects of relativity and more. This is a must have book.

I always have to qualify my weakness toward a book like this: that I'm not a "hard scientist." (In retrospect, I wish I'd had the inclination to become one while younger, but that's another story). This is a fine book, but I read the portions that I highlighted again and again, as I'm trying to understand, among other things, relativity better. But that may be my problem, more than the book's.

One way the book helped me vastly was with the sort of "New Age" reputation Dr. Einstein is getting these days. Some New Age advocates are implying that Einstein was sort of a mystic. They do this because they aren't capable of understanding what he said, or how he said it. But, alas, ignorance of a person's statements does not transform the one who stated them into a guru. The authors state in no uncertain terms that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, Einstein didn't develop his theories by daydreaming and musing over petty, metaphysical items. Rather, he used sophisticated mathematics and physics to devise them. So, sorry, New Agers, you don't have some UFO resident with a German accent who'll deliver you on a new Hale-Bopp.

Oh, and he DID make mistakes, e.g., was it the unfied field theory?; theories he defended but years later referred to as huge errors.

It's well written, though not adolescent; the CD I got with the book is incredible!

If you're interested in Einstein, the man, this is the book I'll recommend. As to relativity, I'll read Bertrand Russell's book, "The ABCs of Relativity," mentioned in this book, and others. And if you want some applications of the theories, the CD is, again, great.

Dr. Goldsmith has given us an intimate look at the "man behind the myth", while Robert P. Libbon has suceeded in making Einstein's work understandable to the layperson who is willing to put in a bit of effort. I enjoyed the biographical content and figured I would have to skim the technical writing, not being well versed in such heady stuff, but found Mr. Libbon's historical anecdotes and entertaining explanations of Einstein's work to be just as compelling as the personal details of his life.

Authorized by the Estate of Albert Einstein this book is enriched even further with illustrations and photographs from family archives as well as a CD-ROM about his life and work which makes this truly "The Ultimate Einstein".