Joseph Schwartz

This book explains the theory of relativity quite well - if you have the patience to wade through random historical tangents, biographies of everyone and their oarents, and the author's push for revolutionary socialism. I am guessing the later is probably a product of being written in 1979; the former of poor editing. The art is atrocious - it mixes steam punk style with silly underdrawn sketches. The type face is mixed; anything harder to understand is in a tiny print. The effect is messy both visually and content wise.

The parts pertaining to the theory of relativity are pages 61-66, 88-120, and 136 to 165. Pages 121 to 135 are a history of mathematics, which, while interesting, has no place in the middle of explaining the theory. And this illustrates why I thought of giving up - but I am glad I stuck with it because the end was worth while.… (more)

Written in 1979, it was one of the earlier examples of a book with a serious subject being illustrated with comic illustrations. Graphic Novels are no longer novel, but the treatment of serious material in this manner was relatively new, and part of the "hippie" culture. This one was a success in that it takes very complicated material - how Einstein came up with several of his theories, including relativity, and presenting the actually mathematics, and the physics in a format that renders it slightly more understandable. I say slightly because understanding the mathematics behind Einsteins theories is extremely difficult. However, I did gain a better feeling for Einstein's thinking, and reasoning, and did see how the mathematics made sense. It also became clear that while a phenomenally original thinker, Einsteins main theories were all based on principles that had been discovered hundreds of years earlier. Even his most famous equation E=MC2 is an updated version of Newton's formulation of Kinetic energy.
This book will definitely not appeal to many people, but if you enjoy math, physics, and nature, as I do, you will find it an interesting and educational read.… (more)