John's Reviews > Einstein's Universe: The Layperson's Guide

This is the printed-word companion to a BBC documentary produced in 1979 in honor of the centennial of Einstein's birth. Author Nigel Calder attempts to explain Einstein's work to the layperson and, as such, this volume stands with a great many other works which are sometimes, collectively, referred to as "physics for poets." Calder is considerably less successful in achieving his goal than other authors have been. It may be that in translating this work from a television documentary to book form (and not vice versa), clarity was lost. Not being a physicist myself, I still have the advantage of having read considerably more lucid, comprehensible, and straightforward explanations of Einstein's theories (e.g., "Beyond Einstein" by Michio Kaku and Jennifer Trainer; "The ABC of Relativity" by Bertrand Russell; and Einstein's own "The Evolution of Physics," co-authored with Leopold Infeld). Thus, I was reasonably successful in decoding Calder's often dense language, which would have benefited from more than the few passing illustrations provided haphazardly throughout the text. Probably not the best starting point for an understanding of Relativity, especially for those not technically minded.