Einstein: the man and his mind - Gary Berger and Michael DiRuggiero ****

Sometimes a book gets labelled a coffee table book as an insult, suggesting it's thin on content if visually attractive. Gary Berger and Michael DiRuggerio's photographic exploration of Einstein is a indubitably a coffee table book, but in its highest form. It's huge (34 x 26 cm) and contains a collection of beautiful imagery.

As I understand it, the book contains highlights from the private Berger Collection in North Carolina. The result is like a massive, well-produced catalogue for an exhibition. We get a page with an image on, with a facing page describing what's seen. Some of these images are striking photographs of Einstein, a good few of which I've never seen before. Others seem more mundane. One, for example, labelled 'The Most Valuable Find', is a Prussian Academy paper pamphlet based on a talk Einstein gave in 1915 on the link between the oddity in Mercury's orbit and the predictions of the general theory of relativity.

Apparently, when Einstein saw his calculations matched observation of Mercury's orbit, he had palpitations and remarked to his friend Arnold Sommerfeld 'it is the most valuable find that I have made in my life.' I don't think many would agree (unless he meant the general theory as a whole, rather than the Mercury observation in isolation), and it's not a visually exciting artefact - it's just a buff-coloured cover of a document - but this illustrates well the kind of small, but interesting contribution to the Einstein story we can find here.

To give a little contrast, another quite interesting example is a photograph of Einstein from 1932, showing him in America, shaking hands with two young children in the snow. It doesn't tell us anything profound, but again it's a small insight into Einstein, the man. Large chunks of the book are given over to letters and a swathe of photographs of Einstein in his later years - sadly there are very few from the period before 1920 when he made practically all his valuable contributions to physics. The photos here are primarily Einstein the celebrity, rather than Einstein the working scientist.

This is a remarkable book. I've given it four stars because I've never seen anything quite like it. I don't honestly imagine many people will want to do much more than leaf through it: it's priced for libraries rather than individual purchase, and mostly that's where it belongs. But for those who simply love everything about Einstein - or wanting some quirky material to give inspiration for a piece they're writing about him - it's a fascinating find.

Hardback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Comments

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future. We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty wo...

Search This Blog