Based on newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk - a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate - became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This left him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, freee spirits, and free individuals.

These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.

"Isaacson has managed the extraordinary feat of preserving Einstein's monumental stature while at the same time bringing him to such vivid life that we come to feel as if he could be walking in our midst. - Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals