In this provocative national bestseller, first-time novelist Lightman takes us back to 1905 and into the dreams of a young patent clerk named Albert Einstein, just as he was completing his theory of relativity. "Lightman lets the reader in on the workings of a creative scientific mind".--Kirkus Reviews.
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First Sentence
Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Ever complain that you don't have enough time, that you have too much time on your hands or wonder where will you find the time? Well before you can do that you might want to consider not just what time is but what possible times there are. Confused ? Well Alan Lightman's imaginative book will help you with the later and provide you with a very enjoyable ..time. Using a young Einstein as his spring board he has our budding genius wandering about Bern thinking of various different types of time and how a world running on those systems might operate.Lest you think this is a dull academic exercise it is not. Lightman's prose ever flows and never gets bogged down. Each chapter ends before you realize it and you wish it would continue on. The touch of the poet is also evident in his writing. The imagination here is of a type that would compare favorably with Borges. The book is relatively short but it is the kind of hidden treasure that you will find yourself rereading often. It is well worth your...time.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
By "funkittens"
Format:Paperback
Not as it first seems! I thought that I would be bored from the begining of this book, how wrong I was. This challenges your ideas about time while still telling a damn good story about Einstein trying to develop his theories. It has since become one of my favourite books and is well worth a read.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Sir Furboy
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
After going to the trouble of importing a copy of this book from America through Amazon Marektplace (as it seems to be hard to obtain outside of the US), I was rather disappointed - and perhaps a little clearer as to why it's not readily available in the UK!
This book contains a series of dreams of imaginary worlds with a very different conception of time. Each chapter then is a thought experiment - but what I would have liked to see is some theme or character or reason why I should be carried through the thought experiments. There was no binding theme, and thus the book could better have been reduced to a list: Imagine a world where time is like X, Imagine a world where time is like Y and so on.
Maybe a poem on time would have been better than a whole book here.
It was not totally uninteresting, but neither did I feel it greatly profound. reading about Einstein in depth makes you more aware of the profound nature of time. reading popular physics books like "The Elegant Universe" likewise.
This book contains a series of dreams of imaginary worlds with a very different conception of time. Each chapter then is a thought experiment - but what I would have liked to see is some theme or character or reason why I should be carried through the thought experiments. There was no binding theme, and thus the book could better have been reduced to a list: Imagine a world where time is like X, Imagine a world where time is like Y and so on.
Maybe a poem on time would have been better than a whole book here.
It was not totally uninteresting, but neither did I feel it greatly profound. reading about Einstein in depth makes you more aware of the profound nature of time. reading popular physics books like "The Elegant Universe" likewise.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful
Pensive, reflective and hypnotic, this one of my favourite reads of the last year - and possibly the last 10 years. Read more
Published 13 months ago by MR DAVID WAKELY
5.0 out of 5 stars
Succinct, mind bending, and mind expanding
This is the strangest book I've read in a while, and I was startled by its impact on me. By dropping into these dreams of different ideas of time, I felt the world was richer and... Read more
Published 23 months ago by J. Moore
5.0 out of 5 stars
Playing with Time
Alan Lightman's 'Einstein's Dreams', first published in 1993, contains thirty possible concepts of the way time might work according to the fictional records from Einstein's... Read more
Published on 1 Mar 2011 by simon-winter
5.0 out of 5 stars
Soul Food
I love this book. I purchased it shortly after reading Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman and was looking for something along that similar literary route. Read more
Published on 8 Feb 2011 by El Stevo
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to Get in the UK
After going to the trouble of importing a copy of this book from America (as it seems to be hard to obtain outside of the US), I was rather disappointed - and perhaps a little... Read more
Published on 10 July 2009 by Sir Furboy
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thought provoking and entertaining
This is not a theoretical book packed with equations, in fact it's a fascinating novel that imagines the dreams that Einstein may have had during 1905 whilst he worked to develop... Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2009 by Steven Unwin
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but RELATIVELY short on TIME
In my quest for another decent time-travel book I was convinced by some reviews that this book was worthy, with Einstein supposedly dreaming up these various scenarios of time: one... Read more
Published on 10 Jun 2007 by Mr. John Frank Herbert
5.0 out of 5 stars
Understanding Reality by Imagining the Alternatives!
This book deserves many more than five stars for its potential to make you a better thinker!!
One of the most creative people I know (holder of dozens of patents that have... Read more
Published on 6 May 2004 by Donald Mitchell
5.0 out of 5 stars
fun and facinating
What was dreaming Einstein during the years uf his elaboration of relativity theory? Genial idea, well written and fun to read. Read more
Published on 29 Nov 1998
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