Einsteins Dreams: Unabridged (Performed by Michael York)

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Summary: Have you ever entered the mind of a transcendant genius?
Review: Have you ever entered the mind of a transcendant genius? Ever explored the landscape, just to see what might be there? Alan Lightman takes us into the mind of a young patent clerk as it may have been, awake in sleep, dreaming of realities outside of realities. Yet every dream makes sense, perfect sense. Walk with young Albert as he draws from his dreams to grapple with the immense and fleeting nature of time itself. You will come away with a wholly new sensitivity to time and the thin veil it creates between reality and chaos.

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Summary: Thought-provoking novel which left me pondering for days.
Review: Einsteins Dreams was a truly fascinating novel in which different theories of the workings of time are conveyed as real-life situations. Definately reading for those who love to stretch their imagination and explore new theoretical horizons. I've now read it several times, and it only becomes more powerful with each time through.

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Summary: Einstein's Dreams is like Kai's Power Tool's for Photoshop
Review: If you've read the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Michael Foucault, or just about any work that has gotten you to stop and think, then pick up this novel because somewhere in its 179 pages, you will discover content that will take your thoughts and grow them to an exponential level. This dwarf sized novel is a power packed sequence of dreams, that demand the reader to think, muse, analyze and reconsider the essence of time, fate, decision, and of what we value in our lives. Some of the texts that I've read this with are: Sartre's "Literature and Existentialism," Oliver Sach's "Man who Mistook his wife for a Hat," Alucquére Rosanne Stone's "War of Desire and Technology; at the close of the Mechanical Age," and James Redfield's "The Celestine Prophecy." Just as KPT has done wonders for the Adobe Photoshop, so does Einstein's Dreams take surfacy ruminations to reveal a universe of implications

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Summary: TIME FOR IT TO BE RECOGNIZED AS THE BEST
Review: I'll just say this: I give it, as a gift, to everyone who is dear to me. It takes life and, through fictional scenarios about the passage of time, makes life more comprehensible than we have any right or tendency to expect. It's more than a book ... it's a blessing. I'd give it an Eleven if I could

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Summary: Brain candy for anyone interested in the realm of time.
Review: Whenever I feel like there's not enough time in my life to do everything...like time is slipping through my fingers, I read Einstein's Dreams. Lightman's understanding of the realm of time and his outstanding ability to simplify a complicated concept made this book one of my most memorable reads and treasured novels. The book is perhaps one of the most enlightened examinations of the subject matter in contemporary times. It's philosophical worth is priceless..

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Summary: How do you take yours?
Review: Heavy themes for a relatively petite-looking piece of literature. Small joys captured in the big scheme of things. See why time has the possibility of flight or slow eternity. Even if not choosing to take the ethereal view of temporal sands, chunks and flows, still to be admired is the perspective of Einstein. In Lightman's capture, dare to wonder how such a brain begins to ponder the place and meaning of each person on Earth. The simple bones of a story, an outlined but ordinary existence, stand in contrast to the airy physics forced into imagination. Any way you wish it, from whatever place it pulls you to read Einstein's Dreams, prepare to be thoroughly impressed, if not feeling as though politely poked back into awareness of time and space.

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Summary: beautiful and whimsical
Review: succeeds in making scientific theory the subject of such imaginative and poetic speculation. very beautifully written, a delight! this is the kind of book, the kind of writing that scientists in laboratories just wish they could do: a bridge between the complexities of scientific thought and the beauty of the written word

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Summary: Physics as Art. To dream beautiful dreams of the universe.
Review: Every unlimited possibility of time and the universe plays out before your eyes. The moment's moment. The infinite possibilities of varied perception. If you have ever dared to dream through another's ideas... Simply wonderful.

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Summary: Reminiscent of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities
Review: The sparse language and structure of Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams are very similar to Italo Calvino's classic, Invisible Cities. In both books, the author imagines or meditates on the nature of space (Calvino), or time (Lightman). The structure of both books is to alot one chapter to each speculation or concept; but as in science, the precision of that structure is what helps to generate every incredible speculation. With both books and subjects, it would have been easy to sink into mystical and ultimately non-descriptive language. But the genius of both books is that they describe such non-intuitive and beautiful ideas with utter precision; the graceful repeitition of attempts and chapter is what gives them narrative coherence, even when the nature of imagination seems inherently random. I'm not sure what how much Lightman was influenced by the structure of Calvino's book. I would find it very fitting if Lightman thought of his book as a natural extension of Calvino's; I am sure that Lightman is aware (since he is a professional physicist at MIT) of the revolutionary nature of Einstein's thought, whose relativity theories put space and time on an equal footing. But I don't think of Lightman as equalling Calvino, as much as becoming an equally intrepid explorer into the abstract and mundane nature of space-time. Both books are fabulous. --David H.

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Summary: Eloquent and subtly insightful book
Review: This is one of the most eloquent and subtle books ever written. It is a haiku of Steven Hawkin's Short History of Time. Strongly recommended