The World As I See It

Portraying the world as he saw it during the Great Wars and the Holocaust in his various essays, addresses, correspondences and some that he received, the book is one of the greatest that I have the privilege to come across. Written by the man, to whom, the whole world attributes for the solution of some of the greatest mysteries of nature, the rationale of human behaviour, the irrationality of human cruelty inflicted on their fellow beings, the solution for a peaceful world, the ode to the artists who tries to make the world a beautiful place, the reverence to the sacrifices of humanity, all of them are composed with a frankness, that does not, for a single moment compromise the urge to shun the evils of the society that threaten all that is peaceful and conducive to evolution of harmonious living with understanding across various views of societies. Explaining a variety of subjects ranging from politics, economy, citizenship, education, religion, values, with the approach, more scientifically aligned yet lucidly philosophical, Einstein curves out his design for a better world. Insolent letters from the people, cornered by his ruthlessly appropriate logic and witty humility that he ushers to pacify the unsatisfied yet faulty complainant, both find places in this collection which is abridged to clamp the scientific correspondences out of this translated edition making it incomplete yet complete in a different perspective.

Relativity The Special and the General Theory

The abstract nature of nature herself could not have been better summarized than this book. Using the minimum mathematics to alleviate the undue stress of a layman, the book revels in its own beautiful physics that takes the reader in a journey to unfold one of the most intriguing characteristics of the space, viz., relativity. Though a little bit of illustrations could have eased the readers in understanding this once novel concept, yet it must be told that, the events are so well described that the readers can easily draw on their own the illustrations that are due in places. But the best part is the way the apparently real 3D space is disproved and replaced with the abstract 4D reality. Infact, the essential relativity is also felt as you go through the book when time sometimes seems to freeze as your thoughts take a leap so fast that yourself a bit sluggish in keeping up with the ideas. For the sake of elaboration, several chapters are appended that gives a support to some of the abstract concepts which are really no less elegant than the main article.

The Evolution of Physics

This is a book on the advancement of physics written by the master, Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld. It begins with the early mechanical notion of the material world, how it gets transformed by the relativistic views and concludes with the understanding of the quantum nature of the universe. But quite surprisingly this physics book is completely devoid of any mathematics and is based purely on logic. Thus while on one hand it is quite appealing to en masse, on the other the philosophical flavour of the articles can be immensely appreciated by readers who are more tuned to traditional scientific articles. Only certain experimental results are quoted and based on these the book offers explanation to the fundamental theories governing the physical world. It explains the old laws, their successes and limitations, introduction of new laws and how they get modified with time. Starting from the laws of absolute motion and theory of corpuscular nature of light and ending with relativity and wave-particle duality of electrons and light, it doesn’t leave any corner of science unexplored. True, these articles do not reflect the actual models through equations and it doesn’t mean that reading these one can immediately start unraveling the apparently complex domains of the modern science but these help us to think in an unconventional way of the universe and prepare a philosophical background for the inquisitive minds.

As a whole this is a really enjoyable read and once more we are left mesmerized by the simplicity of the explanations that once had seemed much more complex, though personally I feel a bit of mathematics could have been incorporated for an even easier read.