September 11, 2023
Graydon, the science editor at the Times Literary Supplement, debuts with an insightful compendium of “short chapters of varying styles that deal with a particular moment or aspect of Einstein’s life.” The vignettes explore the Nobel Prize winner’s career, discussing how a 1905 conversation with engineer and friend Michele Angelo Besso helped Einstein crack his theory of relativity and how the physicist’s unsuccessful attempts to develop a “theory of everything” toward the end of his life alienated him from skeptical colleagues. Other entries focus on Einstein’s personal life, discussing his distaste for alcohol, the mystery of what happened to his daughter Lieserl (Graydon suggests she may have died from scarlet fever when she was 19 months old, or else was given up for adoption, since Einstein had not yet married her mother), and the affairs Einstein pursued during both of his marriages. Some selections are substantial and cover Einstein’s theories and his response to the Nazi takeover of his native Germany, while others are more pithy—“particle” 14 consists of a single paragraph on the health examination that found Einstein “unfit to serve” in Switzerland’s army after he became a citizen in 1901. It adds up to a competent whistle-stop tour of Einstein’s life.