Einstein: His Life and Universe.

Isaacson, Walter (author).

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Isaacson—formerly the managing editor at Time magazine and head of CNN, currently CEO of the Aspen Institute—has written acclaimed biographies of Henry Kissinger and Benjamin Franklin. In his penetrating and magnificently nuanced biography of Albert Einstein, Isaacson elucidates Einstein’s nonconformist and philosophical temperament and the particular nature of his genius within a richly textured social context, and he precisely explains Einstein’s “astonishing, mysterious, and counterintuitive” scientific achievements and their epic consequences. Isaacson explores Einstein’s valiant advocacy for peace and justice in view of the genocidal anti-Semitism that drove him from Germany and revels in Einstein’s pithy humor and role as scientific superstar. Isaacson tells in full the anguished tale of Einstein’s disastrous marriage to Mileva Mari? and his appalling missteps as a father, the private failings of a public humanist. But what distinguishes this extraordinarily encompassing and profoundly affecting biography most are Isaacson’s empathic insights into painful paradoxes. Einstein believed in an ordered universe of “harmony and beauty,” yet his discoveries revealed uncertainty, randomness, and chance. Einstein spent the second half of his life not only attempting to refute his own revolutionary findings but also witnessing the creation of potentially apocalyptic weapons that harnessed the diabolical powers he unveiled.