John and Mary Gribbin have written a book with a somewhat broader scope than Rigden's on the same topic. The first 138 pages of constitute a brief biography in three chapters: The First Twenty-Five Years, The Annus Mirabilis, and The Last Fifty Years. For someone who knows nothing about Einstein's life this is not a bad introduction, but I think that it is a subject worthy of far more than three chapters. Fortunately, there are numerous excellent Einstein biographies, especially those by Ronald Clark's "Einstein: The Life and Times", Benesh Hoffmann's "Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel", and "Einstein: A Life" by Denis Brian [who also has a new book, "The Unexpected Einstein", that I haven't read.] Einstein's life is further described in a DVD that is enclosed with "Annus Mirabilis". This is the Arts and Entertainment Channel biography (that sells separately for almost as much as this whole package). It is quite well-done, but glosses and simplifies this very complex person. The remaining 171 pages of "Annus Mirabilis" is an appendix of thirty two(!) chapters in which the authors try to develop the ideas of special and general relativity, beginning with Cartesian coordinate systems and ending with cosmology. I find it difficult to believe that many naive readers would work through this, but John Gribbin is known for the skill with which he writes about complex science. His "In Search of Schroedinger's Cat" is a classic, but I think the lengthy appendices will be of use mainly to those who already know quite a bit about about relativity. ( )

My copy was used, and was missing the DVD, so this is only a review of the book.

I have always been a fan of Gribbon's science writing. In 1905, Einstein wrote 4 of his most seminal papers, each of which caused a revolution in physics, all while holding down a full time job as a Swiss patent clerk. Gribbon's biography of Einstein as it pertains to the writing of these four papers and the science contained therein is well written and concise. It should be accessible to someone without a background in theoretical physics or math. There are a few equations, but understanding them is not key to understanding the concepts Einstein discovered.

My only major beef with the book is the shortness of it, and the acknowledgments. On the cover, the blurbs on the back and inside book jacket flaps, or the copyright page, there is no mention of the fact that half the pages in this book, denoted only as 'appendix B', is the complete text of Einstein's book "Relativity: The Special And General Theory" written in 1916. I assume that by now the text has passed into the public domain, and so there is no copyright, but I was really disappointed that the publisher chose to snub Einstein in this way. Einstein's description of the two theories that made him famous is less clear than Gribbon's. He was not an author of popular science, and the concepts he describe come way too easily for him. Having a background in science and having seen most of these arguments worked out more carefully in an undergraduate physics class, I was able to follow his text with little difficulty, but I would not recommend it to someone who had never encountered the material before. ( )

I've passed over many of the slew of books capitalizing on 1905's centennial, but anything written by J Gribbin is worth reading. Half the volume consists of AE's own basic sketch of relativity, and a DVD bio of AE is included.