A fine, informative life of the renowned scientist.
How science, religion and politics shaped Einstein’s life and work.
As part of the Jewish Lives Series, Gimbel (Philosophy/Gettysburg Coll.; Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion, 2012, etc.) gives special emphasis to Einstein’s connections to Judaism. Born to secular Jews in Germany in 1879, Einstein attended a Catholic school, where he was bullied for being “the Jewish kid.” His response was rebellion: At the age of 8, he became “a deeply committed practicing Jew,” observing dietary and religious laws. That early conversion, however, was short-lived. By high school, he became skeptical of mysticism, preferring to believe in “a wholly material universe guided by rational principles discoverable through scientific investigation.” Continuing his education in Switzerland, his defiance against authorities of all kinds led to his renouncing his German nationality and eventually—in order to find a permanent job—taking on Swiss citizenship. Einstein’s work in a patent office is well-known; Gimbel thinks the work was “enjoyable and challenging,” since it involved investigating the technical originality of patent applications. Being a civil servant gave Einstein time to work on his own ideas, which culminated in publications that revolutionized thinking about matter, light, and Newtonian concepts of space, time, motion and mass. After being rejected for a Nobel Prize in physics for several years, Einstein finally earned one in 1921. Gimbel examines the role of anti-Semitism in Einstein’s difficulty in securing teaching appointments, as well as the scientist’s support of Zionism, which he hoped would help to create “a proud, self-possessed Jewish population who contributed to the betterment of all….Jews would be seen and, more important, see themselves, as valuable.” The FBI considered his pacifism a sign of subversion and created a file on him. During the war, he was horrified by the potential of an atomic bomb, declaring after Hiroshima, “the war is won, but the peace is not.”
A fine, informative life of the renowned scientist.Pub Date: April 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-300-19671-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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