The scientific story advances within the framework of Einstein's personal life. It is rare that an individual can succeed in all areas of endeavor, be they love, work or play. One feels some disappointment with his personal travails and while he may appear cold or disloyal, many times great people sublimate their relationships to their passion.
Unlike other intellectuals whose personal lives were a total repudiation of the their professed ideology (Marx was an utter slackard, Hellman and Brecht were serial liars, Fuller switched positions with the wind, scolding the world when they began to ignore his newest mania), Einstein never tried to impose a social scheme on others. He loved quietly as one should and made his mistakes in private, again as one should. All in all, a successful work.
There is a wealth of detail describing and chronicling Einstein's life as he struggled with the creation of the momentous scientific discoveries that were to make him famous, especially the long and difficult path to his final solution for the General Relativity problem. Along with this, you get a detailed look even into his personal day-to-day life, learning about his friends, scientific associates, and even his loves. Einstein is no longer a towering, remote intellect plumbing the depths and secrets of the universe in cloistered solitude; Overbye's account displays Einstein's very human side also, showing him to be a man of his times, often with Bohemian and avant-garde personal, social, and political ideas. For example, Overbye mentions how Einstein and his first wife, Mileva, had their first baby out of wedlock, and subsequently married. And the dark side of Einstein's personal life, the unhappy ending to his first marriage and his often careless dealings with the women in his life, don't escape Overbye's purview.
But don't be misled by the title, it's not just about Einstein's sometimes checkered love-life (although he did have more romantic dalliances than I would have expected); Overbye also does an excellent job of presenting Einstein's most important ideas, including a good explanation of the special and general theory of relativity.
And last but not least, Overbye is a fine writer whose prose flows and doesn't get in the way of the story, and who has a good command not only of the personal, but also the scientific side of Einstein's life. Altogether a well-written and fascinating book on a fascinating historical and scientific figure.
(P.S. Did anybody happen to notice the title of my review is the sub-title for Edwin Abbott's classic mathematical and social allegory, "Flatland, a Romance of Many Dimensions?" But it works equally well here as a segue into my review of Overbye's biography.)
