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THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ALBERT EINSTEIN

This lively account of Einstein's relationship with family and friends represents the opening salvo in what will likely be a barrage of ``tell-all'' books based on his papers. In the late 1980s scholars were given virtually unlimited access to Einstein's collected papers and personal correspondence. A series of revelations has ensued about the great physicist's turbulent personal life, such as his fathering of an illegitimate daughter. The authors of this volume, both British science journalists, put forth a compelling argument that, contrary to public perception, Einstein wasn't such a nice guy after all. His letters contain nasty comments about his parents, wives, scientific colleagues, and closest friends. (His favorite put-down was ``philistine.'') His unceasing flirtation with women, his disregard for other people's feelings, and his inability to achieve intimacy destroyed both marriages. For the last 22 years of his life he never visited his youngest son, Eduard, who spent most of his adulthood either in mental institutions or under the care of a guardian. Highfield and Carter go so far as to assert that Einstein's ``emotional myopia'' left behind a series of ``damaged lives.'' According to the authors, the executors of Einstein's estate suppressed the truth for decades to prevent these embarrassing disclosures. Highfield and Carter usually indict Einstein with his own words. They do offer enough damning direct source material to ensure that there's more than just a kernel of truth to this revisionist treatment. But too often they speculate on Einstein's emotional frame of mind or recreate conversations or events based upon second-hand accounts from dubious sources. And by virtually ignoring Einstein's considerable humanitarian and pacifist writings, the book hardly offers a balanced portrayal. His scientific contributions are given a superficial treatment, and the reader learns virtually nothing about his complex religious and philosophical outlook. In that sense, this portrait is tantamount to a Rembrandt biography that sporadically mentions that the Dutchman doodled on a canvas.

Pub Date: May 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-312-11047-2

Page Count: 368

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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