Stellar research and prose combine in a splendid biography of physics’ most luminous supernova.
A comprehensive, sympathetic and very readable portrait of the man, the celebrity, the scientist and the theories that transformed physics and the modern world.
Neffe, a German journalist specializing in scientific topics, is supremely qualified for his complex task. Although Albert Einstein (1879–1955) lived his final decades in Princeton after fleeing Nazi Germany, he never learned much English and suffered numerous indignities in his adopted country. Marginalized by the new generation of physicists, surveilled by the ever-suspicious J. Edgar Hoover, he never managed to complete his work on unified theory. Neffe begins with the greatest indignity of all: the autopsy at which a pathologist removed and absconded with Einstein’s brain and an ophthalmologist his eyes. The narrative then backtracks to “His Second Birth” as a scientific star in 1919, then provides a steady chronological account moving from ancestry to birth to death. Neffe pauses occasionally to clarify such intellectual matters as Einstein’s celebrated “thought experiments,” his theories of special and general relativity, his distaste for the uncertainties of quantum mechanics; some of these sections are dense and difficult. The biographer carefully and compassionately explores Einstein’s personality, which remained childlike throughout his life. Twice married, he was unable to be much of a husband or father; he repeatedly failed to credit colleagues; he sometimes leaped without looking into turbulent waters of public debate. Though he saw the need for force against Hitler, he was a lifelong pacifist and predicted the horrors of nuclear confrontation. In later chapters, Neffe explores Einstein’s astonishing, enduring celebrity and finds opportunities to both credit and damn the United States. Americans helped popularize the physicist and his theories; they admired him for his belief in God; and they also called him a “commie” and treated him like Cassandra.
Stellar research and prose combine in a splendid biography of physics’ most luminous supernova.Pub Date: April 30, 2007
ISBN: 0-374-14664-0
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2007
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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