Here are 46 books that E = mc2 fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am the co-founder and current owner of The Manhattan Rare Book Company. I’ve been in the rare book business for 25 years, specializing in the history of science with particular emphasis on material relating to Albert Einstein. Like many people, I’ve long been drawn to Einstein, attracted by his wisdom, curiosity, personality, approachability, and general decency.
Anyone studying Einstein (even cursorily) will quickly encounter Abraham Pais's classic. Published in 1982, it has stood like a monument, influencing every study of Einstein since. Pais knew Einstein well and sprinkles his book with invaluable personal anecdotes and first-hand information. Because it focuses on Einstein's science, it can be a little intimidating, but it is organized well and readers can bounce around the book easily, focusing on what they find most appealing.
Subtle is the Lord is widely recognized as the definitive scientific biography of Albert Einstein. The late Abraham Pais was a distinguished physicist turned historian who knew Einstein both professionally and personally in the last years of his life. His biography combines a profound understanding of Einstein's work with personal recollections from their years of acquaintance, illuminating the man through the development of his scientific thought.
Pais examines the formulation of Einstein's theories of relativity, his work on Brownian motion, and his response to quantum theory with authority and precision. The profound transformation Einstein's ideas effected on the physics of…
I’ve always loved well-told stories of people who came before us, because I’ve always assumed that their lives offer us lessons. Subtle ones, perhaps, but important ones. That’s how, many years ago, I came across the Parallel Lives of Plutarch, who’s been called history’s first biographer. Eventually, I decided to have my own stab at interpreting the biographies of historical figures, and to weave history, philosophy, and psychology into (hopefully) gripping stories. As a journalist and a dual citizen of the US and Germany who’s also lived in the UK and Asia, I naturally looked all over the world for the right characters. And I still do.
Some of life’s greatest adventures, triumphs, and disasters are intellectual (which is why I compare Albert Einstein to Hannibal in my own book). As a young iconoclast, Einstein completely blew up the conventional wisdom in science. He found a new way of thinking about gravity, time, space, light, and the whole universe. Being eccentric, he came to embody our notions about the mad scientist. As a human being, he could be endearing but also cruel—it’s not clear whether he ever met, or cared about, his disabled daughter Lieserl. But the most intriguing lesson of his life to me is that even such a genius could get mentally stuck. It’s as if, in his later years, his imagination had been thrown into prison.
By the author of the acclaimed bestseller 'Benjamin Franklin', this is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available. How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom. Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk - a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate - became…
I am the co-founder and current owner of The Manhattan Rare Book Company. I’ve been in the rare book business for 25 years, specializing in the history of science with particular emphasis on material relating to Albert Einstein. Like many people, I’ve long been drawn to Einstein, attracted by his wisdom, curiosity, personality, approachability, and general decency.
Of all the books I've read about Einstein, this one was, perhaps, the most eye-opening for me. For years, the prevailing opinion was that while Einstein was (of course) brilliant, and his special and general theories of relativity were seismically important, he was on the wrong side of history with his views on quantum theory. Stone sets the record straight: Einstein was indeed skeptical of many aspects of quantum theory (particularly with his refusal to accept quantum entanglement and inherent randomness), but his challenges to the theory were so intelligent and so piercing, that the entire scientific community had to respond to him. Stone argues convincingly that Einstein's concerns were often the driving force propelling the theory forward.
Einstein and the Quantum reveals for the first time the full significance of Albert Einstein's contributions to quantum theory. Einstein famously rejected quantum mechanics, observing that God does not play dice. But, in fact, he thought more about the nature of atoms, molecules, and the emission and absorption of light--the core of what we now know as quantum theory--than he did about relativity. A compelling blend of physics, biography, and the history of science, Einstein and the Quantum shares the untold story of how Einstein--not Max Planck or Niels Bohr--was the driving force behind early quantum theory. It paints a…
I am the co-founder and current owner of The Manhattan Rare Book Company. I’ve been in the rare book business for 25 years, specializing in the history of science with particular emphasis on material relating to Albert Einstein. Like many people, I’ve long been drawn to Einstein, attracted by his wisdom, curiosity, personality, approachability, and general decency.
This is probably the book I study the most when researching Einstein. Although comprehensive in scope, it is still easy to navigate, with clear chapter headings that allow the reader to find information quickly. While many people hear the word "encyclopedia" and expect dry and dull prose, that is not the case here, for it is a book designed to be read, not merely consulted. Near the end of the book, there is a chronological list of Einstein's papers with concise descriptions. This is a gift to anyone interested in Einstein's scientific life, since the authors make even the most difficult of Einstein's papers seem approachable.
This is the single most complete guide to Albert Einstein's life and work for students, researchers, and browsers alike. Written by three leading Einstein scholars who draw on their combined wealth of expertise gained during their work on the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, this authoritative and accessible reference features more than one hundred entries and is divided into three parts covering the personal, scientific, and public spheres of Einstein's life. An Einstein Encyclopedia contains entries on Einstein's birth and death, family and romantic relationships, honors and awards, educational institutions where he studied and worked, citizenships and immigration to America,…
As a lifelong student with what I sometimes call “a multidisciplinary disorder,” I have been intrigued both about “the outer world,” or the “external environment of life on planet Earth, and “the mind that knows the world.” Hence, as a teenager in New York City, I read voraciously books in philosophy, history, and the social and natural sciences to learn what “great minds” have thought about “the world.” Much later, as an “academic” researcher and writer, I scoured the shelves of university libraries to examine what I considered the strengths and weaknesses of the academic disciplines that addressed our “knowledge of the world,” and their applications for “changing the world for the better.” My book The World as Idea is the first volume of a projected trilogy modestly entitled The Fate of This World and The Future of Humanity. I’m now working on the second volume, The Reality of This World.
Albert Einstein was, for a very good reason or three, Time magazine’s “Person of the Twentieth Century.”
Unfortunately, very few people are knowledgeable about his contributions to modern science, which are enormous and complex, and even fewer seem to know about his thinking on politics, war, and peace in particular, and the world in general.
In this book, readers have the opportunity to learn more about Einstein’s thoughts about the world of the 20th century, which are usually presented in a clear, accessible fashion.
The most advanced and celebrated mind of the 20th Century, without a doubt, is attributed to Albert Einstein. This interesting book allows us to explore his beliefs, philosophical ideas, and opinions on many subjects. Subjects include politics, religion, education, the meaning of life, Jewish issues, the world economy, peace and pacifism. Einstein believed in the possibility of a peaceful world and in the high mission of science to serve human well-being. As we near the end of a century in which science has come to seem more and more remote from human values, Einstein's perspective is indispensable.
After 17 years in the advertising industry, I became a professor to teach what I learned in practice. Only then did I start reflecting, researching, and discovering why we were successful in some efforts and not in others. From that perspective, I’ve been crafting new ways to approach marketing that are not based on what worked in the past but on what works now in light of the dramatic changes in the field. Within marketing, I focus on social media strategy, digital marketing, and storytelling.
Like discovering the hidden process for generating ideas, discovering the hidden power of curiosity unleashed my capabilities and improved my efforts.
Leslie explains that curiosity declines as we grow older and as technology increases. Both work against a sustained quest for understanding that leads to insight, innovations, and ideas. If you know this, you can nurture your desire to know and stay curious in a modern world where we can seemingly answer any question almost instantly.
This book opened my eyes to new possibilities illuminating new ways to become a more engaging brand storyteller.
"I have no special talents," said Albert Einstein. "I am only passionately curious." Everyone is born curious. But only some retain the habits of exploring, learning, and discovering as they grow older. Those who do so tend to be smarter, more creative, and more successful. So why are many of us allowing our curiosity to wane? In Curious, Ian Leslie makes a passionate case for the cultivation of our "desire to know." Just when the rewards of curiosity have never been higher, it is misunderstood, undervalued, and increasingly monopolized by a cognitive elite. A "curiosity divide" is opening up. This…
I'm the writer and artist of the Johnny Hiro graphic novels. In those books, I use pop culture reference humor, but never simply as a joke. A reference can act as a hint to a world beyond the story the writer tells. I often dig slightly into an emotional resonance behind that reference—perhaps the (fictional) story of why it exists, or perhaps it even becomes an integral plot point. Popular media and culture often have a direct influence on our creative arts projects. And just sometimes, that art becomes an integral part of the popular culture itself.
I read this play before I saw it, and it was great as a read. Steve Martin is obviously known as a comedic actor. But if you like the few movies he’s written, think Roxanne and LA Story, then you might want to give this one a try. It’s the fictional meeting between Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein circa 1904. Picasso has started gaining fame for his breaking of artistic boundaries, and Einstein is a year away from releasing his theory of relativity. The two men have a chance meeting in a bar and drunkenly philosophize about art, science, society, meaning, and sex. And because it’s Steve Martin, don’t be surprised if Elvis comes along.
I have been a reader and a writer for as long as I can remember, so books about reading, writing, and storytelling have always interested me. As a school library media specialist for over 30 years, I have read thousands of picture books and placed wonderful books in the hands of thousands of young people. Several of these books were mentor texts when I wrote my picture book biography. I want young people to be inspired to read and write, and I hope these books will do that for the adults who select them and the children who read them.
Jennifer Berne is one of my favorite nonfiction authors, and this book is at the top of my list. I enjoyed the sprinkling of verses from Emily Dickinson’s poems throughout the lyrical narrative about her life.
The dreamy illustrations complement the language and imagery of Dickinson’s poems. I love this book because it tenderly tells Dickinson’s story and will inspire young poets to write.
An inspiring and kid-accessible biography of one of the world's most famous poets.
Emily
Dickinson, who famously wrote "Hope is the thing with feathers that
perches in the soul," is brought to life in this moving story. In a
small New England town lives Emily Dickinson, a girl in love with small
things-a flower petal, a bird, a ray of light, a word. In those small
things, her brilliant imagination can see the wide world-and in her
words, she takes wing. From celebrated children's author Jennifer Berne
comes a lyrical and lovely account of the life of Emily Dickinson: her…
I hold the chair of Old Testament at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at Munich University in Germany. My main area of expertise is Semitic languages, though, which is also the field for which I previously held a chair at Leiden University in the Netherlands for fifteen years (eventually, however, Munich made me an offer one cannot refuse). Hence my main occupation concerns the interpretation of ancient texts in exotic languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, and others, mostly at the baseline of individual words, grammatical forms, and syntactic constructions. Despite the seemingly dry, specialized character of my work, it is, in my view, a lifestyle rather than a job.
Scholarship, regardless of the particular field, is always a creative process. Craft and method, the fruits of a rigorous education and hard work, are essential prerequisites, but genuine breakthroughs often seem to result from some mysterious incubation: a wild dance of ideas that emerge from the subconscious, stirred up by the keen will to understand something. Only a few of them eventually make it, by way of sensual representations, to the surface of consciousness, where they are formed and articulated by logic and language. In this book, the great French mathematician Jacques Hadamard captivatingly describes his investigation into the psychological underpinnings of creativity. He stresses the role of images and emotions in thought processes. I have always liked his conclusion that every significant invention requires at least some poetic feel.
Fifty years ago when Jacques Hadamard set out to explore how mathematicians invent new ideas, he considered the creative experiences of some of the greatest thinkers of his generation, such as George Polya, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Albert Einstein. It appeared that inspiration could strike anytime, particularly after an individual had worked hard on a problem for days and then turned attention to another activity. In exploring this phenomenon, Hadamard produced one of the most famous and cogent cases for the existence of unconscious mental processes in mathematical invention and other forms of creativity. Written before the explosion of research in…
I have always been fascinated by how the world works. What gives gravity so much power? Why is it easier to lift things with levers and pulleys? Why do we have electricity inside of our own bodies?! The world is amazing. My job editing nonfiction books for kids puts me on the front lines of some of the smartest science writing out there. While I had no hand in the making of the following five picture books about physics, they are still some of my favorites because of the way they peel back the mysterious layers of the world to show us the science hidden in our daily lives.
You can’t talk physics without talking Einstein! This beautiful book explores Einstein’s curiosity and drive to know more, which began when he was young. His journey from nonverbal child to brilliant scientist is fascinating and inspiring for all kinds of readers.
Travel along with Einstein on a journey full of curiosity, laughter, and scientific discovery. Parents and children alike will appreciate this moving story of the powerful difference imagination can make in any life.
