About the Author

Jrgen Renn, Assistant Professor in the University Professors Program at Boston University, and Robert Schulmann, Assistant Professor of History at Boston University, are coeditors of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein.

Reviews

"Will further undermine the stereotype and reward all who delight in the company of young people deliciously in love. We all have trunks in the attic harboring letters that reveal the same impatience with parents, the same youthful naivete, passion and delight. But this was Einstein, and that makes all the difference."--New York Times Book Review "This excellent book will be of especial interest to academics and Einstein devotees."--Sunday Telegraph "This illuminating and surprising collection opens with an excellent introduction that sets the stage for this record of a difficult romance."--Booklist

"Will further undermine the stereotype and reward all who delight in the company of young people deliciously in love. We all have trunks in the attic harboring letters that reveal the same impatience with parents, the same youthful naivete, passion and delight. But this was Einstein, and that makes all the difference."--New York Times Book Review "This excellent book will be of especial interest to academics and Einstein devotees."--Sunday Telegraph "This illuminating and surprising collection opens with an excellent introduction that sets the stage for this record of a difficult romance."--Booklist

When personal letters of well-known people are published, readers expect either new intimate details of the correspondents' lives or developments in the writers' personalities, ideas, and relationships or both. In this collection, readers will find information about a few topics that excited Einstein in his youth and how he interacted with his professors. They will even find that Maric, who was Einstein's first wife, read the same books and had interests and intellectual abilities similar to Einstein's. Unfortunately, none of this is really new information nor is it exciting to read. The letters provide neither intriguing details about Einstein and Maric's personal lives nor much background information that will help us better understand Einstein. The greatest problem with this book is that 51 of the 54 letters were already published in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein , Vol. 1: The Early Years: 1879-1902 (Princeton Univ. Pr., 1987), which also includes other works that help put the letters in a different perspective. As the full collected works are a better choice, this volume is not recommended.-- Eric D. Albright, Galter Health Sciences Lib., Northwestern Univ., Chicago