Anyone with an interest in Einstein should give this splendid book a try."-The New York Times Book Review Accurate, witty, and clear as brook water, it is a work against which future scientific biographies will be measured. Pais' work is where to come for a definitive description of the way in which Einstein's work and life fitted together."A monument to sound scholarship and graceful style. There are other biographies which concentrate on these matters, and are much more interested in Einstein's private life. Subtle is the Lord is rather less interested in the non-physics related activities of Albert Einstein, though considerable space is given to his pacifism and Zionism. In fact, Pais suggests that the very aspects of Einstein's character which made the earlier breakthroughs possible meant that his work became more divorced from the mainstream of twentieth century theoretical physics as time went on.
A major theme of his book is to answer the question of why, after the major achievements of special and general relativity and his quantum mechanics papers, Einstein produced so little work of permanent value in the second half of his working life. A fair knowledge of physics is necessary to read this, but reading a biography of Einstein which doesn't convey the work that he did is much less interesting to those who have such a knowledge. (the Einstein quote finishes ".but he is not malicious") is an excellent biography of Albert Einstein written by an eminent physicist.
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