Albert Einstein: Universal Genius

Children's Literature - Marilyn Courtot

In an easy to read style, with factual and cartoon style illustrations, Venezia introduces one of the of world's greatest scientists, Albert Einstein, a physicist and a science superstar in his day. All three of the recent scientists featured in Venezia's books have been physicists (Marie Curie and Stephen Hawking) however, Einstein was a bit different than Marie, who was a serious and good student, and Hawking, who struggles with physical difficulties. Einstein also had quite a sense of humor (although his childhood is noted as being fairly happy, other books on the subject indicate that Einstein was a demanding and difficult child who knew more than his teachers). The same was true in college where he skipped classes and after graduation could not get a job teaching, but his friend Marcel Grossman who helped him in college also helped him get a job at the Swiss Patent Office. Einstein married and he and his wife had a son soon after and then a second son, but Einstein was completely engrossed in his work, pretty much ignoring his family as he came up with his famous equation, E=mc2. Many scientists did not understand his work and he shook up the scientific world even more with his General Theory of Relativity. In his personal life, he divorced and remarried. He was also very sad that his theory was used to create the atomic bomb, but he was outspoken about the Nazi party and fortunately was able to come to the United States where he was offered a position at Princeton and eventually became a US citizen. The closing page contains a glossary of the bolded words in the text and an index. Reviewer: Marilyn Courtot