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Einstein in Berlin

Bantam, 2003

I wrote this book for one reason: I wanted to understand how the 20th century went to hell, so thoroughly and so fast.  In April 1914, the month Albert Einstein came to Berlin, Germany’s capital was the center of the most powerful state in Europe, an ambitious and hungry city that prided itself on its pre-eminence – in knowledge, technical capacity, in culture and all the apparatus of modern living.  Europe as a whole understood itself as – and was -- master of most of the world, directly as imperial rulers, and indirectly, through the wealth concentrated there, its science and its machines, and the evident superiority of its culture, its ways of living and thinking.  Four months later, Germany and its allies and opponents tragi-comically stumbled into continent- and then world-wide war.  By the time Einstein left Berlin in December of 1932, the plunge into the abyss was complete; in a development already clearly on the cards, Hitler would become Chancellor the next month.

Those eighteen years in Berlin saw Einstein reach the height of his scientific career; he made his greatest discover there, the account of gravity known as the General Theory of Relativity, and went on to give birth to modern cosmology, help lay the foundations of modern quantum theory, and much more besides. He rose to global fame.  He witnessed and even became a a symbol, of Berlin’s post-World War I cultural renaissance.  And he was a committed political activist from the earliest days of the war, playing a part and serving as witness to Germany’s descent into Nazism.  This book tells that story, using Einstein’s unique vantage to examine how a time and a place with (in some sense) every advantage and great reserves of intellectual and cultural accomplishment managed to destroy itself, and so much besides.

Praise

The book has earned significant praise. American Scientist reported that “Levenson does a superb job of conveying the unusual relationship Einstein had with Berlin, neither ever fully at ease with the other… Einstein in Berlin is a fine book on a subject that has simply cried out for a readable narrative account.” 

In The Washington Post, John Gribbin called it “a powerfully written and engaging book that is not only important as history but carries lessons dramatically relevant to the present day.” 

Purchase

Einstein in Berlin was originally published in 2003, but Gribbin’s highlighting of current lessons remains true – perhaps more so now, which is why the book was re-released in its first e-book edition in May, 2017.  It can be bought at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, and everywhere electronic books are sold.