Isaacson does a similarly graceful job of integrating Einstein's science with his broader philosophical concerns, especially the global worries that plagued him with the approach of World War II. Even as a committed pacifist he remained primarily a scientist and revised his opinions as fate required. "For a scientist, altering your doctrines when the facts change is not a sign of weakness," Isaacson underscores.
The man who had once listed his religion as "Mosaic" when applying for a professorship in Prague became much more thoughtful about Judaism in later years. Whatever Einstein's precise faith, Isaacson says, "his beliefs seemed to arise from the sense of awe and transcendent order that he discovered through his scientific work."
With the help of many witty, candid letters, Isaacson offers a wonderfully rounded portrait of the ever-surprising Einstein personality. Equally important is the Einstein myth, and the material on this subject is even more entertaining. Einstein horrified his colleagues by enjoying his vast celebrity. ("Einstein's personality, for no clear reasons, triggers outbursts of a kind of mass hysteria," the German consul reported to Berlin as the great man made one of his rock-star visits to New York.)
He also stymied the press in its efforts to keep up with his accomplishments. Isaacson has great fun with the reportorial frenzy that surrounded each new pearl of Einsteinian wisdom. Among the headlines that appeared in the New York Times: "Unintelligible to Laymen" and "Stars Not Where They Seemed or Were Calculated to Be, but Nobody Need Worry."
Isaacson is also keenly attuned to the intellectual crises hidden by the hoopla. As Einstein aged, he changed from a fierce young iconoclast to a pillar of science, resistant to advances in the very quantum ideas that he himself had brought forth. "The intellect gets crippled," he said of growing older, "but glittering renown is still draped around the calcified shell." Here as throughout the book Isaacson asks the right questions. ("So what made Einstein cede the revolutionary road to younger radicals and spin into a defensive crouch?") And he answers them with the clear, broad grasp of complex issues that make this book an illuminating delight.
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