A tremendously enjoyable and interesting book.  I find it amazing that this hasn’t already been said;  Walter Isaacson has done such a fantastic job of weaving this tale, that one can become so engrossed in the story of Einstein, to the point of forgeting there was an author at all.  Somehow the words seem to appear on the page as some mystical part of the “Good Doctor’s” distained “Quantum Weirdness”.

The story itself begs a few, largely rhetorical questions of history though.

Why has history failed to record, or more accurately misrepresented, Dr. Eistein’s role in both the start and the outcome of World War II?

This is not to say that Eistein played any active or deliberate role in the rise of the Nazi party, but, and through no fault of his own, his Jewish lineage combined with his surprising fame served only to antagonise Hitler and added a large amount of fuel to the already deteriorating relations between German Jews and Arian Germans.

His prosperity stood in stark contrast to the general failure of the German economy, and must have hightened the latent inadequacy of the Nazi ego.

His convenient pacifism, turned globalism, turned military opportunism, returned globalism was selfserving and transparent, and must have seemed like a typical Jewish flip flop to the Nazi anti-semites.

Combine all of this with his early involvement in the conception and developement of the atom bomb and I find it highly hypocritical that his name isn’t forever connected to Hiter’s in popular history.

It is also baffing to me that his success in science garnered such fast growing and wide spread fame and celebrity.  While his accomplishments certainly deserved notariety and acknowledgement, the speed at which he rose to such a high level of fame, at the hands of a people largely incapble of even a basic understanding of his science, seems more fantastic than any hollywood movie today.

I in no way wish to diminish the respect that his immense intellect rightly deserves, and I both acknowledge and praise his generosity, kindsness and sense of social responsibility.   I don’t however abide by the notion that his accomplishments in science and politics warrant painting him in anything but his true colours.

He was an ego driven overachever, who revelled in embarrassing and ridiculing his colleagues and challengers.  He was a womaniser and emotionally cold to the people who loved him most, and he was, quite honestely, a horrible father.

His historically documented positive traits, are not diminished by the negative ones, but even so, most people only get to see one side of his story.

Bravo Mr. Isaacson, you’ve outdone yourself!