Einstein On The Strip
29
generously sharing all of their computer expertise; to Peter Steeves for his wisdom,
encouragement, and (m)oral support; to Naomi Rohatyn, for always being there; and
Felicia Campbell, for believing in me, and never once losing faith.
Bibliographical Essay
I can supply exact references for all of the clips, quotations, and factual statements
above. For two profound analyses of Einstein, to which I am much indebted, see
Abraham Pais, Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life o f Albert Einstein (New York:
Oxford UP, 1982; foreword Roger Penrose, reprinted 2005) and Thomas Levenson,
Einstein in Berlin (New York: Bantam Books, 2003). These are (in different ways)
indispensable, and equally great. Pais’s Einstein Lived Here (New York: Oxford UP,
1994) is also a joy. The latest full-scale biography is Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life
and Universe (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), as reliable as it is complete, a rich
treasure of information and insight. I have also learned a great deal from Dennis Brian’s
Einstein: A Life (New York: John Wiley, 1996) and from his provocative The Unexpected
Einstein: The Real Man Behind the Icon (New York: John Wiley, 2005). For the forces
that shaped Einstein’s cultural milieu, consult Fritz Stem, Einstein’s German World
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 1999). My favorite physics (indeed, science) textbook
is Misner, Thome, and Wheeler’s magisterial Gravitation (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman,
1973), worth all the space-time it takes to read. Richard Wolfson, Simply Einstein:
Relativity Demystified (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003) is clear and well-written; so is
Leo Sartori, Understanding Relativity: A Simplified Approach to Einstein’s Theories
(Berkeley, CA: U. of California Press, 1996). More demanding is Robert Geroch,
General Relativity From A to B (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). Max
Bom’s Einstein’s Theory o f Relativity, rev. ed. (1924; repr. New York: Dover, 1962) is as
valuable as it is venerable. [Einstein’s anxiety about cobblers and gaming-houses appears
in a letter he wrote to Bom in 1924, repr. in The Born Einstein Letters 1916-1955:
Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times (trans. Irene Bom, foreword Werner
Heisenberg, Preface Bertrand Russell, new pref. Diana Buchwald and Kip Thome, 1971;
New York: Macmillan, 2004).] Among many outstanding works, I must mention Lewis
Pyenson’s The Young Einstein (Boston: Adam Hilger, 1985), Alexander P. French (ed.),
Einstein: A Centenary Volume (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1979), Elie Zahar,
Einstein’s Revolution: A Study in Heuristic (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1989), and
especially Arthur I. Miller’s Albert Einstein’s Special Theory o f Relativity: Emergency
(1905) and Early Interpretation (1905-1911) (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1981).
For the early reception of relativity theory in America and elsewhere, see Stanley
Goldberg’s Understanding Relativity: Origin and Impact o f a Scientific Revolution
(Boston: Birkhauser, 1984). Goldberg and Miller (respectively) are invaluable for tracing
and tracking the Einstein phenomenon—his influence on us and ours on him, as he went
from being a struggling student to citizen of the world. Another useful work on this topic
is Alan J. Friedman and Carol C. Donley (ed.), Einstein as Myth and Muse (New York:
Cambridge UP, 1985). For a crisp summary of Einstein’s role as intellectual status
symbol, see John D. Barrow, “Einstein as Icon,” (Nature, January 2005), available online
at http://plus.maths.org/issue37/features/Einstein/index.html. For Einstein’s own work,
the place to start is Einstein’s Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Change the Face o f
Physics (John Stachel, ed., foreword by Roger Penrose, New York: Cambridge UP, 1998)
contains all five epochal papers that launched Einstein’s career and made him into a
superstar. Prof. Stachel (Boston University) is also the original editor of The Collected