Everything Einstein Book

This is a very readable and enjoyable book about the great physicist. The easy-going but informative style is reminiscent of the "Dummies" series books which I'm a great fan of for their ability to impart a great deal of information painlessly and enjoyably. I learned many interesting things about Einstein the scientist and Einstein the man that I didn't know before, and I've read several other bio's of the great physicist. After providing some historical background on the scientific events that led up to Einstein's great discoveries, discussing the ideas of Ernst Mach, Helmholtz, Hertz, Planck and so on, the authors launch into a discussion of his most important contributions, which were the paper on the photoelectric effect, the special theory of relativity, and the general theory of relativity.There is such a wealth of information and detail about both Einstein's scientific ideas and his public and personal life that it's difficult to summarize it all, but I'd like to mention a few of the more interesting things that I learned. Einstein's role as scientist, cultural icon, humanitarian, father, public speaker, and legendary and mythic genius are all discussed. One interesting thing is that the book explodes one myth about Einstein, which is that he did poorly in the German gymnasium in everything but math and science. Actually he excelled in Latin and languages too, so contrary to the popular myth, he wasn't a total failure in the public schools. He did run into trouble with the form-master at the gym and graduated without a diploma, and in high school he was even less happy and threw fits so he could be declared mentally unstable by the family doctor so he could stay home from school. Despite this Einstein was reading Kant's ideas about epistemology and logic by the time he was 13. This also enabled him to avoid required military service. In college Einstein routinely skipped classes although he got caught up using his friend Marcel Grossman's notes. But Einstein still graduated at the bottom of his class.Einstein's increasing discomfort with the conclusions of quantum theory such as the famous uncertainty principle led him to try to disprove it in a famous paper he authored with the younger David Bohm (who only recently passed away). His opposition to the theory despite all the evidence once led Oppenheimer to say, "Einstein is cuckoo." In addition to his more well-known contributions, I didn't know that Einstein had collaborated with fellow physicist Leo Szilard on the invention of a new refridgerator pump. The idea for the pump came from a famous but tragic incident in which an entire Berlin family was killed when the pump leaked toxic gases into their home. Einstein and Szilard set out to develop a safer pump using magnetic fields and coils and sold two of their designs to the Electrolux Co. Eventually they would hold 45 patents for three different models of the home refridgeration pump. Einstein developed a new type of compass, a hearing