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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.
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Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here
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