IN the long centuries of European civilization, many have been the intellectual giants in whose ears the plaudits of world acclaim never rang. It remained for a wiser posterity to relegate them to niches in an immortal hall of fame. For such a career, fate never destined the name of Albert Einstein, a man whom kings and princes have feted, whom eminent scientists have hailed as a second Newton, and to whom peace-loving multitudes in every land have turned as a fortress of tranquil serenity in a world delirious with the war fever of nationalism.

The difficult task of brushing aside the veil of popular adulation to portray the man as he really is, H. Gordon Garbedian, a science editor of the New York Times, has essayed in the first published biography of the life of this great mathematical genius. With a sweeping imagination which, although it tends to overdramatize prosaic details, never fails to sustain the reader's interest, the author unfolds an absorbing tale of a courageous fighter whose entire youth was a bitter battle against poverty and racial prejudice.

The influence of the outer world of science and of current political happenings on Einstein his biographer skilfully handles, intermingling interesting data and anecdotes with the main thread of his narrative. However, in the case of the great man's exile from his homeland, Mr. Garbedian goes too far in his digressions. His rather long description of Hitler's rise to power makes the book lose in effectiveness in assuming the aspect of a general history.

As regards the chapters of the work dealing with Einstein's scientific achievements, these are carefully isolated from the whole. This the another has done in order that the unmathematically inclined reader may skip these without destroying the unity of the context. And this move has been well chosen, for despite the author's avowed aim to present a simple explanation of less technical aspects of relativity, the lay reader becomes quickly befuddled in a bewildering maze of abstract mathematical formulae. But if one discounts these two chapters, the work presents a warm and appealing picture of this modest, publicity dodging genius, whose efforts in the cause of international peace and tolerance have won him almost as much renown as his purely intellectual activity. A. L. S.