Title: ABC of Relativity Author(s): Bertrand Russell Pages: 151 Publisher: Routledge Publication date: 2001 Language: English Format: PDF ISBN-10: 0415154294 ISBN-13: Description: Everybody knows that Einstein did something astonishing, but very few people know exactly what it was.
In his History of Western Philosophy, Russell makes the progression of thousands of years of the biggest thinkers in the West read like a suspense thriller. I was hoping he could do the same with Einstein's relativity.
No such luck. Though he writes this especially for the lay person, Russell often seems to lose patience with his intended audience, becoming frustrated at them for not having the education to "get" what he's saying but then saying it anyway. Which, to me, is a sign that he became disenchanted with the premise of the book as he plowed through it, which to me is a failure, which to me suggests that maybe Russell didn't have such a masterful grasp on these complex ideas yet himself. He only wrote the book in 1925, when the whole world was still fumbling around trying to figure out what Einstein had done (we still are).
If you are a non-physicist like me and really want to understand one of the human race's most elegant and significant concepts, I recommend looking elsewhere. Lewis Epstein's _Relativity Visualized_ might be a good place to start.
Title: ABC of Relativity