[Note: While Einstein's discoveries were made while he lived in Europe, he did emigrate to the United States in 1933 where he had profound impact on science, politics, and American culture. Hence, this review is important in our understanding of American History in the 20th Century.}

The image of the elderly sage and the formula of the young genius do not begin to exhaust what there is to know about Einstein, as Walter Isaacson's new biography details. The author brings us the insightful life of Einstein that not only illuminates its subject, but also has much to say about science and creativity, war and peace, and politics and society in the tumultuous 20th century.

Contrary to legend, Einstein was not a backward student, nor did he fail mathematics; but he did rebel against the rigidity of German education. When he had a chance to blossom on his own terms he quickly did so, graduating at the head of his class from the Zurich Polytechnic. He was not, again as legend has it, laboring in total obscurity in the Swiss Patent Office when he published his revolutionary papers in the “miracle year” of 1905; he was by then already in contact with many of Europe's leading scientists.

But there is nothing mythical about that transformational year of 1905; it is impossible to overstate how electrifying the work was that he published within a span of a few months. Between March, 1905 and the end of that year Einstein produced four brilliant papers that changed centuries of scientific beliefs. The first re-defined light as consisting not only of waves, but equally of tiny packets of energy (later called photons). The second concerned the motions of molecules, and explained the mysterious phenomenon called Brownian Movement. The third articulated the special theory of relativity, which defined the relationship between space and time. And finally came the famous formula, which says that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. These papers, published when he was still in his mid-20s, cemented his reputation in the firmament of science forever.

Einstein would lived for another 50 years, often in the public eye. He escaped Germany in early 1933 just as Hitler was coming to power. Not a devout Jew, but proud of his Jewish heritage nonetheless, Einstein remained a man of enigmas. How could he be so cold and indifferent a husband and father, and at the same time such a compassionate champion of humanity? How could the young rebel turn into a scientific curmudgeon, never accepting what he saw as the heresy of quantum mechanics?

Einstein warned FDR of the need to begin work on the atomic bomb before Germany beat the United States to this awesome weapon. Ironically, Einstein was not involved on the Manhattan Project, in no small part because of the FBI's unproven suspicion that he was a communist sympathizer. He railed against McCarthyism which for him was a reminder of Nazi Germany. Throughout out his life he rebelled against authoritarianism that suppressed freedom of thought. He advocated for world government to to eliminate future wars in the era of the atomic age.

Who has not seen the face gazing out at us from endless photographs: the hooded eyes and the twinkle of humor, the bristling moustache and halo of white hair, the wrinkled countenance: the iconic wise man of the 20th century, the incomparable Albert Einstein? And who has not heard of E=MC2, the formula that launched the nuclear age—even if not everyone can explain what it means?