Einstein in Berlin , Thomas Levenson , Bantam Books, New York, 2003. $25.95 (486 pp.). ISBN 0-553-10344-X
When Albert Einstein arrived in Berlin in the spring of 1914, he was at the height of his intellectual powers. Not yet a household name, he was already a force to be reckoned with in the European physics community. Five years would pass before he achieved true celebrity status with partial confirmation of the general theory of relativity in 1919, and almost 20 years would go by before his 1932 departure from the city with which his name has become inextricably linked. Thomas Levenson situates Einstein in that German metropolis, and he does so with great intimacy and sensitivity. In contrast to earlier biographies, Einstein in Berlin is the story of a man and a city. The book is a novel approach to Einstein historiography that, for...
