First appears one inviting-but-thick biography of Albert Einstein, then another, albeit thinner. The first book shoots to the top of several best-seller lists but the largely unnoticed second book is much better.
Walter Isaacson, formerly an American CNN and Time executive, wrote "Einstein: His Life and Universe," and Jurgen Neffe, a German scientist and journalist, wrote "Einstein: A Biography."
In fact, Neffe's work was published in 2005 in Germany, thus embracing the centennial year of Einstein's major discovery, the theory of relativity. His book was on the German best-seller list for a year.
The next year, 2006, saw many more of Einstein's most important papers and letters released to scholars, so Neffe utilized those for the updated book that has recently hit bookshelves in the United States.
Isaacson also used them for his work.
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Neffe wrote a cover story for the German magazine Der Spiegel in 1999, when his editors wanted one story on "the evil" of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler, and another on "the brain," Einstein.
At the time, Neffe read every Einstein biography, and he says he found himself disappointed.
"Honestly, I didn't like any of them," Neffe said by phone from his home in Berlin. "I'm a biochemist and I've studied physics, and if I cannot really understand what is going on, then it's a bad sign. So I thought I'd like to write the Einstein biography I'd like to read myself." (Neffe, who wrote for Der Spiegel for 10 years, has taken a new position running the Max Blanck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.)
He said he discovered some things about Einstein that he hadn't known: "His inappropriate behavior toward his sons surprised me, and he was not entirely innocent toward what happened to his younger son, Eduard. (For many years Eduard was institutionalized as mentally deficient.)
"Scientifically, I was surprised that Einstein didn't reach his goal to generalize special relativity. One more surprise — how he treated both religion and his Jewish friends."
Neffe chose a thematic approach so he could give the reader a chance "to follow the whole story, like an article for a magazine. I wanted to concentrate on one subject rather than doing it chronologically."
With each chapter treating an entire subject — and creatively titled "How Albert Became Einstein," "Why Is the Sky Blue?" etc. — the reader can choose whether to read it at all.
Very pleased with his translator, Shelley Frisch, an American based at Princeton, Neffe said, "She did a perfect job. She looked for my tone, the kind of music I was trying to display. She made it into a mirror image of my book. She wanted to be free to react to the way Americans read books. I hope Shelley will do my next book on Charles Darwin."
Frisch, who spoke from Princeton, also read all the previous Einstein books. When she read Neffe's book, she was struck by its excellence. "I didn't need to enhance it. Jurgen is a beautiful writer. I'm a very acoustic translator. I use a lot of alliteration and slightly offbeat formulations — if they group well together.
"I vocalize my text and make sure it sounds right. Jurgen uses wordplay, so I couldn't use that exactly, but I tried to incorporate as much playfulness into the text as I could."
Frisch also is a Sherlock Holmes type. "I live in a physics mecca, so I started ambushing the people who have written either on physics or Einstein. I formed bonds with the community, and I now think 'it takes a village' to do a good translation."
While she was translating, Volume Ten of the Einstein Papers appeared, so Frisch read the entire book with the help of "lots of pots of coffee and a helpful staff." This is part of what Frisch said makes the book "really hot off the presses in terms of science."
Frisch is highly impressed with Neffe's approach. "He got to know Einstein's caretaker of his country home, and it gave astonishing insight into his private world. He put on his detective hat and found living witnesses. The book is so fleshed out that you have insights you don't find anywhere else."
The trick for Frisch in translating is "making the English come alive, as if the author had written it in English in the first place. Germans can write very long sentences with huge leaps of logic."
Frisch and Neffe put their heads together several times, both in the United States and Germany. "Jurgen is elegant in his German prose. It's a dazzling book in German. My task, as I saw it, was to give it an equivalent amount of elegance in the English language."
And she has certainly succeeded.
Frisch is disappointed that Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FS and G) has not given the same promotional thrust to "Einstein" that Simon and Schuster has given the Isaacson book. "It's a David and Goliath situation," she said.
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Isaacson, who lives in Washington, D.C., was on tour in Seattle when reached at his hotel. Chewing loudly as he ate his lunch during the interview, Isaacson said that as a young reporter he had always wanted to "write longer."
He said he enjoys studying the brains of smart people, leading him naturally from Henry Kissinger to Benjamin Franklin to Einstein.
Isaacson said he did all the research and writing of his Einstein book personally, even though he expresses a lot of gratitude to others in the book's acknowledgements.
Isaacson, who has no background in math or science, asked several scientists to "vet" his work. He thanks Douglas Stone, a Yale professor of physics, for instance, for "helping to write the chapter on the 1905 light quanta paper, quantum theory, Bose-Einstein statistics and kinetic theory."
Murray Gell-Mann, another physicist, helped Isaacson "revise early drafts, edited and corrected the chapters on relativity and quantum mechanics, and helped draft sections that explained Einstein's objections to quantum uncertainty."
Several other scientists and lay persons read the manuscript and offered "edits, rephrasing of passages, and helped with numerous revisions."
Isaacson hesitated to characterize Neffe's book, which he finally called "a series of essays — so it isn't really a book. It's thematic. I read it when it came out in Germany."
Isaacson said he initially considered Einstein "a genial old man, an absent-minded professor. But I discovered he was a passionate, flesh-and-blood person with a great rebellious streak. I like his mind, but he was a cold guy toward his family. My wife always asks me why I keep writing about guys who are not good to their wives."
He said that "Relativity is a pretty simple concept — it's not that hard to explain."
And he believes that everyone "should appreciate science. Einstein wondered how it would be to ride alongside a light wave. I remember as a kid, my dad asking me, why is the sky blue? You don't have to be an Einstein to wonder why the sky is blue."
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Isaacson's book is longer and covers more of the scientist's later life in America, but it is clunky and more like a textbook in style, the kind of book the reader plods through, then has a difficult time getting to the end.
Frisch thinks that Isaacson's many contributors actually rob his book of an identifiable "voice."
Neffe's book, benefiting from Frisch's creative translation, reads very much like a novel. It is witty and playful — and it makes Einstein's life and discoveries seem exciting.
Isaacson's book currently occupies the No. 1 spot on several best-seller lists — evidence that his book is better known.
Hopefully, Neffe's book — a book by a scientist about a scientist, written with style and warmth — will emerge as the favorite.
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com