Einstein; His Life and Universe by Isaacson, Walter - 2007

New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. xxii, 675, [7] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Frontis Illustration. Main Characters. Illustrations. Sources. Notes. Index. Slight wear to DJ. Autographed sticker on front of DJ. Signed by the author on the title page. Walter Isaacson (born May 20, 1952) is an American writer and journalist. He is the University Professor of History at Tulane University. He has been the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C., chairman and CEO of CNN and Managing Editor of Time. He has written biographies of Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Henry Kissinger. Isaacson began his career in journalism at The Sunday Times of London, followed by a position with the New Orleans Times-Picayune. He joined Time magazine in 1978, serving as the magazine's political correspondent, national editor, and editor of new media before becoming the magazine's 14th editor in 1996. Derived from a Kirkus review: A comprehensive and marvelously readable life of the eminent scientist-and more, the eminent counter-culturalist, rebel, humanist and philanderer. Brave enough to tread on such highly specialized ground, and working with newly available archival materials, Isaacson lucidly explains the finer points of Einstein's theories. The general theory of relativity, had its birth, Isaacson writes, while Einstein was struggling to write an article on his special theory of relativity; sitting in his office in Bern, where he was a patent-examiner, he had the thought, "If a person falls freely, he will not feel his own weight"-"the happiest thought in my life," Einstein recalled-but underlying it was formidable work in physics and mathematics that took Einstein many subsequent years to express, and Isaacson acquits himself very well in taking readers along some strenuous paths of reasoning. Along with the science, Isaacson gives us an Einstein with whom it might have been fun to enjoy a stein of beer.