Simply Einstein

There are some books that I finish, but can’t say that I thoroughly enjoy.  Having never been a science geek, when I see books like this one, I have to gear myself up to muster the energy to get through it.  While it is not a boring topic, it is not one I can fully concentrate, hence why physics was not my best class.  You can ask my high school friends, John C. and Scott L.  We took it in senior year and had already achieved senioritis before the class began.  Hence, reading Simply Einstein by Richard Wolfson was difficult at best.  I give an RA much credit for having an academic book, probably a mandatory read in a college course, as their all-time favorite book.  Or was I duped?  It does happen every once in a while that a truly academic read would be given to me.  (I may go back and check on it, nonetheless, I did read it.)  The title says it all, the author’s goal is to have the reader believe that Einstein’s theory is easy and very applicable as a basis for all that follows, “the laws of physics are the same everywhere and every place, and light is always measured to be traveling at the same speed, regardless of how it is created or measured”.  Once you get this concept, Wolfson spends much of the next few chapters methodically sharing examples of how this is true. By doing so, he works to illustrate, “now that wasn’t so difficult to understand, was it?” … physics made easy.  Well… not so fast! What about Galileo’s theory?  Now you have a divergent approach, which Wolfson attempts to connect, albeit with a deep set of examples.  So who is right?  If in fact I was a more of a ‘How’ person rather than a, “just tell me a story” that ‘moves me’ then I may have been more interested.  This is definitely a book for a very niched population of people.  I am not in that crowd, so, it is a big pass on this one for me.