Einstein's Dreams

There is a place where time stands still. Raindrops bang motionless in air. Pendulums of clocks float mid-swing. ... As a traveler approaches this place from any direction, be moves more and more slowly... It is 1905 in Berne, Switzerland. A young patent clerk has been dreaming marvelous dreams about the nature of time. He is Albert Einstein and he has almost finished his special theory of relativity. What were his dreams like those-last pivotal few months? Here, in this extraordinary and highly acclaimed work by physicist Alan Lightman, thirty fables conjure up as many theoretical realms of time, dreamt in as many nights. In one world time is circular, its people fated to repeat triumph and trial over and over and over again ... in another, men and women try to capture time — which appears as a nightingale — in a bell jar... in yet another, there is no time, only frozen moments. All are visions that gently probe the essence of time, the adventure of creativity, the glory of possibility, and the beauty of EINSTEIN'S DREAMS. 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".