Einstein for Beginners

Amusing, irreverent, sophisticated and highly accessible, Einstein for Beginners is the perfect introduction to Einstein's life and thought. Reaching back as far as Babylon (for the origins of mathematics) and the Etruscans (who thought they could handle lightning), this book takes us through the revolutions in electrical communications and technology that made the theory of relativity possible. In the process, we meet scientific luminaries and personalities of imperial Germany, as well as Galileo, Faraday, and Newton; learn why moving clocks run slower than stationary ones, why nothing can go faster than the speed of light; and follow Albert's thought as he works his way toward E = mc2, the most famous equation of the twentieth century.

Joseph Schwartz is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and writer and is the author of Einstein for Beginners. He has had appointments in physics and psychiatry at Columbia University and the City University of New York. Since 1983, he has had a clinical practice in London.

Michael McGuinness is the coauthor of Einstein for Beginners with Joseph Schwartz and Introducing Jung with Maggie Hyde.