Book review: Einstein

A book I've had around for ages, and may even have read before. It is quite decent. A reasonable intro to the life and work. Goodreads likes it. JB turns out to be a real physicist, which is always helpful when dealing with this kind of stuff. To quibble, some of his pre-modern-physics is wrong in minor ways (Copernicus's model was not "simpler" than the prior work, at least in terms of number of epicycles used) but if there are errors elsewhere, strangely enough I didn't spot them.

There are almost no equations in the book, so this is no place to learn the maths of relativity, and indeed it isn't a good place to learn the theory either, because that isn't the point. But it's good on Einstein's childhood and early intellectual development, which in some ways could be considered the most interesting bit, from the point of view perhaps of an aspiring physicist. Even in an earlier world where being stateless at age 16 wasn't too much of a problem, the casualness with which AE floated around surprises.

I think it is somewhat on the uncritical side. The refusal to accept QM is said, but not strongly explored. The end-of-life at Princeton is said, but the amount of space given to all those years is slight. Women are elided.

I preferred Subtile is the Laird, but that's harder work, if I recall correctly.