peter_fischer's review against another edition

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3.0

This is supposed to be an ‘accessible’ version of Einstein’s relativity theories. I’m not so sure having read it, although I am a scientist. I doubt that there is an accessible version of Einstein’s less than intuitive theories.

chemical_crash's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

3.5

plisetskys's review against another edition

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4.0

“if you've never done anything wrong it's probably because you have never tried anything new.”

this was actually so interesting ,,,

sriniwhoreads_1027's review against another edition

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3.0

This is soo tough to read and hard to grasp the concept of the relativity….

cutlassmeatmouth's review against another edition

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3.0

This Einstein guy was real smart, but apparently not smart enough to explain relativity to my dumb ass. Truthfully it's not quite as accessible as it would have you believe. I have a college education and an interest in physics and mathematics, but I found the writing style to be just antiquated enough to obscure meaning. I'll probably read it again with the hope of gleaning perhaps 25% more meaning from it, or I may intervene by reading some kind of modern cliff notes version of it, we'll see.

fredrik_nk's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

painofboredom's review against another edition

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5.0

Presentation wise I'm not sure if it's anywhere as accessible as it's intended to be

Content wise obviously it's more interesting and fascinating than any sci fi could ever be

ibm's review against another edition

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challenging informative fast-paced

3.5

sl4u's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging informative slow-paced

3.0

Read a 1961 edition of the book translated by Robert W. Lawson.

I think this is supposed to be a popular physics book for general audiences, but I would definitely not recommend for people who are not at least a little bit familiar with the concepts of special relativity, general relativity, and space-time.
Many of the explanations would have been more clear had they been accompanied by simple illustrations. The few illustrations that did appear (along with text explanations) usually did a much better job conveying meaning than paragraphs of plain text.
Some of the examples were very good, such as the object in the chest and the 2-d spherical surface.

jvanwagoner's review against another edition

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informative

4.25

I have a scientific background and have recently been reading many groundbreaking books by great scientists, and Einstein's work is high on my list. This book was easier to understand than expected, geared toward people with a high school physics background. Other books explain the theory of relativity in even clearer terms with less math, but it is always good to read it from the original author.