Einstein in Time and Space: A Life in 99 Particles

by Samuel Graydon

Overview

Walter Isaacson’s Einstein meets Craig Brown’s 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, in this innovative biography of the famous physicist told in ninety-nine dazzling vignettes.

Most of us would agree that Albert Einstein’s name is synonymous with “genius” and that his likeness is often used as a shorthand for all scientists, appearing everywhere from cartoons to textbooks. He has become more myth than man. That being the case, how best to capture his essence?

In Einstein in Time and Space, talented young science journalist Samuel Graydon answers that question with an illuminating mosaic—99 intriguingly different particles that cumulatively reveal Einstein’s contradictory and multitudinous nature. Glimpsed among these shards: a slacker who failed every subject but math, a job seeker who couldn’t get hired, a lothario who courted many women, and a charmer who was the life of the party.

As brilliant as he was inconsistent, Einstein was simultaneously an avid supporter of the NAACP and the fight for civil rights and someone capable of great prejudice. He was loved by many, known by few, and inspirational to a generation of young physicists.

Graydon reveals every corner of Einstein’s world: the false reporting that rocketed Einstein to fame nearly overnight, his effect on people he met merely in passing, even the remarkable posthumous journey of the famed physicist’s brain.

Entertaining, comforting, bolstering, and shocking, Einstein in Time and Space is the unique story of a man who redefined how we view our universe and our place within it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781797169101
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication date:	11/14/2023
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 5.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Samuel Graydon is the science editor at the London Times Literary Supplement. He has published short fiction and has been longlisted for an Alpine Fellowship. He studied English language and literature at the University of Oxford.

Editorial Reviews

An insightful, profound, and sometimes humorous biography that captures the personal life and contradictory character of the wunderkind that is Einstein….A new complex image of this amazing thinker bursts into view.”

author of Wizard Marc J. Seifer

Through ninety-nine short, charmingly written vignettes, Graydon shows not just the tremendous range of Einstein’s life—the luckless job seeker, the ladies man, the political activist, the wise professor. With deft elegance, he also gets across the deep science that transformed our vision of the universe forever.”

author of E=mc2 David Bodanis

09/11/2023

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. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Insightful…a competent whistle-stop tour of Einstein’s life.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Impressionistic…those who choose this as their introduction to Einstein will not regret the experience.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Every once in a while a book comes along that you can’t put down. Graydon has fashioned an insightful, profound, and sometimes humorous biography that captures the personal life and contradictory character of the wunderkind that is Einstein….A new complex image of this amazing thinker bursts into view.”
—Marc J. Seifer, author of Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius

“Graydon reveals Einstein, warts and all, in a marvelous way that few if any previous biographies have ever managed. Each scene impels you to read the next, making it hard to put the book down. A highly original, irresistibly engaging portrayal of history’s most iconic scientist. Bravo!”
—Michael Guillen, author of the international bestseller Five Equations That Changed the World


“Albert Einstein's life was as multifaceted and challenging as the universe he described. The best way to appreciate it is to break the story down into small pieces, a job that Samuel Graydon has done brilliantly. This book provides us with a uniquely compelling look at the human side of one of the greatest thinkers of all time.”
—Sean Carroll, author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion

“What a great book. Through 99 short, charmingly written vignettes, Graydon shows not just the tremendous range of Einstein’s life—the luckless job seeker, the ladies man, the political activist, the wise professor. With deft elegance he also gets across the deep science that transformed our vision of the universe forever.”
—David Bodanis, author of E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation

“All too often, Albert Einstein is presented as a towering genius on a pedestal. In this refreshing, accessible, and inspirational book, Samuel Graydon takes him off that pedestal and show his humanity. In the end we’re left with the realization that the man’s great scientific discoveries were informed by both his strengths and his foibles.”
—W. Bernard Carlson, author of Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age

From the Publisher

2023-08-24
A new entry in the crowded field of books about Einstein takes an impressionistic approach.

Graydon, science editor of the Times Literary Supplement, presents a “mosaic biography…composed of short chapters of varying styles that deal with a particular moment or aspect of Einstein’s life.” Born to a prosperous, nonobservant German Jewish family, Einstein was, despite popular legend, probably a prodigy, which guaranteed difficulties in the rigid German and Swiss educational systems. By the time he entered college, he was fascinated by and highly accomplished in mathematics and physics, preoccupied by unsolved problems involving space, time, gravity, and light. Professorships in theoretical physics were rare in 1901, so it’s no surprise that he didn’t get one, but his patent office job paid well, made use of his scientific training, and gave him time to write papers that appeared in Europe’s leading physics journal even before the miraculous four published in 1905. Establishment scientists noticed, but matters moved slowly. He entered academia and rose steadily, occupying a prominent position in Berlin. He hit the jackpot in 1919 with his proof of general relativity, which enraptured the media and made him the world’s most famous scientist. Since his death in 1955, historians have turned up mildly unflattering material (an illegitimate child, some racism), but no revisionist biography has gained traction. Scholars tend to agree that Einstein’s discoveries were history’s most significant scientific achievements. Graydon’s research emphasizes secondary sources; perhaps the book’s outstanding feature is the extensive, opinionated bibliography, but those who choose this as their introduction to Einstein will not regret the experience—even though the author passes quickly over the science. Readers searching for a careful layperson’s explanation of relativity will find them in biographies by Abraham Pais and Dennis Overbye.

No one should pass through life without reading a biography of the immortal physicist, and this one will do fine.

Kirkus Reviews