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Summary: Are you a "Later" or a "Now"?
Review: What might be floating in the subconscious mind of a great thinker as he develops a paradigm-busting new theory? As he dozes off at the desk, how might these thoughts be manifested in his dreams? Alan Lightman creates hypothetical answers to these questions, speculating about Einstein's dreams while he worked on his Special Theory of Relativity. Each chapter describes a surreal and strange world that operates according to alternative rules of time. In one world, people desiring longer lives choose to live in the mountaintops, since time travels more slowly farther from the center of the earth. In another, entropy and time no longer increase together and consequently everything becomes more ordered with time. My favorite world was one in which people live forever. The population is divided into two philosophical camps: the "Laters" and the "Nows". The "Laters" rationalize that since they have forever to accomplish anything, there is no rush, so they perpetually procrastinate. The "Nows" believe that with infinite lives, they can become anything that they can imagine. They have an infinite number of live experiences (careers, spouses, degrees, etc.). Does this sound like some people you know? The book is quite intriguing, and, more than being educational about what time really is (Lightman never describes Einstein's theory), it is mind-opening, providing profound insights into what we often take for granted - the lens through which we perceive time.
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Summary: Descartes, Proust, Finney, Hawking, Albert & You
Review: This is a small book with a large and lush imagination. It's parables turn time (and our lives) into a series of intriguing distortions - so well, indeed, that we could say we have met the distortions, and they are us. This gem of a novel is ideal for those who can love an interwoven mixture of literary lyricism and scientific romanticism. Alan Lightman has been a professor of physics, and yet he's never remotely professorial here. He spins webs of time as if our clocks and our senses of time and action came from our closets, our windows, our dreams, our stolen glances, our broken clock towers, our faiths, our births, our graves, our ghosts, our lost loves. I was going to say Einstein's Dreams is "Groundhog Day" for worldly modernists, but closer to the mark, this efficient and expansive little novel is really Ray Bradbury for grown ups, at once somber and playful, haunting and whimsical. It's also profound enough often enough to matter now and for a long time to come. Put your watch in a drawer, turn the clock to the wall, settle in, and pick up this book.
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Summary: enchanting!
Review: I absolutely love this book. It is beautifully written, poetic prose. His descriptions are gentle and so compelling, he takes me into the worlds he's desribing, with tastes, textures, sights, sounds, emotion. Unlike a lot of people it took me a while to read the book. I kept it in my bathroom and read one chapter at a time. This gave me a chance to wrap my mind around what he was talking about. My own thoughts and concept of the universe have expanded and opened for new thought on the subject. Amazing.
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Summary: Intriguing thoughts about Time
Review: This is essentially a collection of short stories about how time and variations in the motion of time would effect our world. Some of them are quite poetically beautiful, but this--I don't think--should qualify as fiction; I am not saying that to put it down. It's one of the most intriguing looks at time that you could spend your time on. Very scientific, but still very fun.
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Summary: Intense Physics for Slumberly Sundays
Review: I don't like written fiction, and try to avoid it. There is more nonfiction that interests me than I could read in five lifetimes, and even that assumes the best of circumstances - and a certain perspective on time. But I could not resist something so preposterous as this book purported to be: thirty dreams, each detailing a distinct view of time. ...It would suffice to say simply that I read all thirty in under one hour and immediately read it again. But I should add that Lightman's vision and clarity are delightful, and that aspects of time (and of measurement, observation, and science generally) reappeared to me with a vibrancy I had not imagined. I recommend this to anyone with an hour. Nay, an hour and a couch...It is, rather, a place to burrow and digest not the details or stopping points, but the shift and variability. Don't read this to learn the thirty distinct views of time, and don't read the dreams scattered across days or more. Read it, all the way through at once, to feel your reality pulled, twisted, and reinvented. Feel Lightman's prose affect your own reading of the book (an insanely reflective effect!), such as when a dream of "sticky" time pulls you in and slower, or when a dream of stagnant time seems glossed with immobility. A treasure!
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Summary: A beautiful and disorienting work
Review: This stange little book exists simultaneously on scientifc, theological, social, mental, emotional and psychological levels. It is very nearly sureal in its playground of time. Alan Lightman has succeeding in creating a unique world, which happens to be set in the landscape of Einstein's mind. The chronology can be jumbeld to create different effects and the idea of time as you read becomes a factor, as each chapter heading is a date. Have you been reading for an hour or for 11 days?
There is just not enough to say about this book. The closest thing I can relate it to is Lao-Tzu's Tao-te-Jing and Gabriel Garcia Marquez' 100 years of solitude. This book is one wild trip.
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Summary: Alternate time physics
Review: This is an exploration of the physics of time, or rather conjectural physics of time. Most of the short descriptions are only loosely rooted in actual Einsteinian physics, but they do make for very interesting reading. If you've ever wondered what the universe would be like if time moved in different 'directions' than it already does, I totally recommend this. Chris
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Summary: Interesting concept eloquently executed-an enlightening read
Review: Einstein was not a "classical" scientist in the way we usually understand such things, which is to say, he was not a laboratory researcher of the type normally associated with physicists. Rather, most of his work evolved out of what he described as "thought experiments" wherein he posed questions and considered-and rejected-possible solutions in his head. To the extent his theories have been "scientifically" verified, it has been through the lab work of others who sought to prove or disprove his theories. Lightman has taken the "thought experiment" concept and converted it into this work, transforming the waking "experiments" into sleep time "dreams" that, through a series of short vignettes, illustrate both the process and the substance of Einstien's theories and work processes. To the scientifically sophisticated-especially about physics-- this book will probably come across as simplistic and a bit of a bore. Everyone else, that being, I suspect, 99.995% of the potential audience for the work, should find it both fascinating and somewhat educational. Be aware, however, this book is about Einstein's ideas-not about the man himself. If what you are looking for is insight into Albert the man, look elsewhere. If you have a mild interest in trying to understand what the heck the man was talking about, this is the book for you.
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Summary: Science to the Layman
Review: This book is remarkable in its simplistic yet beautiful explanation of time's secrets.
The philosophical and scientific viewpoints are carefully molded with a brief glimpse into Einstein's character.
I loved the book and thoroughly recommend it to all with a love for science blended with philosophy.
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Summary: Beautiful Little Gem of a Book! A Trip to Outer Dreamspace!!
Review: Having read this twice in the past 5 years or so, this gem is a timeless, smooth transport practically into another world,make that worlds. It bends and stretches your views of reality,even if this new world disappears after you close the pages, and view the "real" world. Much like the 100-year old or so little book about geometry, angles,and a trip thru FLATLANDS (the other book's name,though I can't remember that one's author). A fine drug-free head-trip!
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