One of history's most absorbing periods, refracted in the career of a key figure.
From television producer and science writer Levenson (Measure for Measure, 1994, etc.), a lively chronicle of the physicist’s crucial 18 years in the German capital.
In 1913, fellow scientists Max Planck and Walther Nernst invited Einstein to join the faculty of the University of Berlin and to accept election to the elite Prussian Academy of Science. At 34, he had already changed the face of physics with his theory of special relativity. Plank and Nernst offered him an opportunity to work in the company of his scientific peers, with “no teaching obligations whatsoever [and] the right to lecture as he pleased,” in a city that over the next two decades would see many startling events. The author takes Einstein's stay in Berlin as the point of departure for a wide-ranging examination of a crucial historical crossroads. Within a year of the physicist’s arrival, WWI had broken out, to a chorus of approval from his new colleagues; Einstein was among the few to protest the wild enthusiasm with which the youth of Europe marched off to slaughter in the trenches. At the same time, he was working on General Relativity, the theory that would make him the most celebrated scientist of his time—perhaps, Levenson argues, of all time. The author conveys in largely nontechnical language the essentials of Einstein's scientific achievements and of the quantum theory that he helped launch but never could bring himself to accept. Levenson also gives a frighteningly vivid picture of the political and cultural upheavals that shook Germany and the world in the years following WWI. Einstein's Jewish background, along with his pacifist and internationalist ideals, made him an inviting target to right-wingers eager for scapegoats in the wake of Germany's defeat. His departure for America on the eve of Hitler's ascension to power brings the story to a close.
One of history's most absorbing periods, refracted in the career of a key figure.Pub Date: April 8, 2003
ISBN: 0-553-10344-X
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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