She was so smart, so strong in many other ways, but Albert was her weakness.

That is the one thing I wish was different in this book and about her character.

I wish Mileva would have fought back more. I can’t tell you the number of times I said out loud while reading this book, “You are such a dick.” Kudos to Marie Benedict for being able to create such a complex character that I was drawn in by him, only to be betrayed right alongside Mileva. I won’t ruin the plot by telling you what happens, but I will say this: the very same things that made Einstein charming in the beginning make him a royal asshole as the story progresses. After years of her fending off his advances and a prolonged courtship due to money issues, Albert promises to build a life with Mileva based in intellectual discussion, shared science and joint experiments – the very thing of which she has always dreamed. Einstein enters her life and everything changes. During her first year of study – she is the only female physics student in her section – she makes a pact with one of her female roommates that they will eschew men and embark upon a life dedicated to study and science.Īs we know from the title, that’s not what happens.

He even goes so far as to move the family to help her become one of only a handful of women who study at the Zurich Polytechnic university. Because of this, her father sees fit to encourage her love of school and studying, especially science. The story opens with the early education and formative family years of Mileva Maric, an unusually smart Serbian woman, for whom no marriage is expected because a deformed hip has left her with a limp. But I was hooked immediately and knew this was going to be the tale of my kind of woman: intelligent, determined and unwilling to let anyone or anything stand in her way. That is a hard thing to qualify, so you may just have to go with me on that idea. Not only is it about a strong historical woman whose story really hasn’t been told, the tone or “voice” of the book strongly matched my own. I wanted to know what readers (and Amazon’s algorithm) thought the books have in common.Īs it turns out, that was identifiable right away. (There is a little science in there I didn’t understand, but it is not at all overwhelming.) Over the next year or so it kept showing up in various places and when it appeared in the “People Also Bought” section on the Amazon pages for my books, I knew I had to read it. I remember seeing it reviewed in the New York Times when it first came out, but because I don’t give a hoot about science, I didn’t read it. I am SO not a math and science person, but I think The Other Einstein may well end up as my favorite book of 2017.

The other einstein author