This new biography attempts a balanced assessment of the most famous scientist of modern times. Brian (Genius Talk: Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries, 1995) draws on material recently released from Einstein's archives, much of it concerning less than flattering aspects of his private life. The reader learns of rumors of a daughter, Liserl, who may have been given up for adoption; of his mentally ill son Eduard, who died in a Swiss psychiatric hospital; of a long string of affairs; of the recent allegations that his first wife, Mileva, was an unacknowledged collaborator in the discovery of the Relativity Theory. Brian does not try to make too much of this material, most of which is at best peripheral to Einstein's life and achievement. (The allegations concerning Mileva, which have been trumpeted by feminist critics, he dismisses as unfounded.) Nor does he much alter our perception of the key issues of Einstein's scientific work—relativity and the search for a Unified Field Theory, which dominated the last three decades of his career. Einstein's flight from Nazi persecution, the letter to FDR that spurred the creation of the Manhattan Project, and his tireless work on behalf of the founding of Israel are given full and illuminating treatment. Likewise, we get a clear picture of his humble, almost bohemian, daily life; of his playful sense of humor and his love of music; and of the awe he inspired in many of those close to him. We also get a disturbing look at the fear and hatred he inspired in others, illustrated by excerpts from his voluminous FBI file. Brian draws on an impressive range of sources, from ordinary people who happened to cross Einstein's path to the scientists with whom he worked. The only serious shortcoming is Brian's style, which occasionally borders on the soporific. Sometimes slow-moving, but a comprehensive and evenhanded treatment of Einstein in the wake of recent charges against his character. (14 photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 17, 1996
ISBN: 0-471-11459-6
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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