Lincoln Journal Star from Lincoln, Nebraska • 79

Lincoln Journal Star Sunday, April 29. 2007 3K Page design: George Wright BOOKS mi i iii riirnTirnniiiiH'iimwriii mi turn mmu mi a Publishers Weekly HQ IT IP IV WT TV TV" JSM; if- Js- Vf v. 1 .7 ing crowd in Berlin that "Jewish in-teUectualism is dead." Einstein's pacifism came to an end with the rise of Hitler, and in October 1933 he set sail for the U.S. and a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He would never see Europe again.

Before and after he came to the United States he parried innumerable questions about his religion. It is clear that he did not believe in a personal God, but, as he responded to a question, "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." This was enough to set Boston's Cardinal O'ConneU on edge, who even said of the theory of relativity that "I very seriously doubt that Einstein himself really understands what he is driving at." And even orthodox Jews reminded him that Spinoza had been excommunicated from his Amsterdam synagogue. Einstein became a U.S. citizen in 1940. A year earlier he played, perhaps, his most famous role as an opponent of Hitler.

The story of how a group of European Emigres, fearful that German scientists were experimenting with nuclear fission, went to Einstein for help is well known. In short, the help that was needed was getting a letter from Einstein to President Roosevelt, warning him of the risk. It was Leo Szilard and Eugene Wignerand, later, Edward Teller, all Hungarian Jews who had escaped Hitler, who went to Einstein. The letter was written and delivered, and the Manhattan Project was begun. Earlier Einstein had written, "If and when war comes Hitler will realize the harm he has done Germany by driving out the Jewish scientists." On an April day in 1 955 1 was walking down a Boston street, having left my college class, and noticed the headline on the afternoon editions of the papers, EINSTEIN DIES, in a size usually saved for declarations of war and the death of presidents.

He was 76. Walter Isaacson is the CEO of the Aspen Institute and the author of several books, including a biography of Benjamin Franklin. "I speak to you today," Einstein had written in an undelivered speech to celebrate Israel Independence Day, "not as an American citizen and not as a Jew, but as a human being." Isaacson captures that human being in an engaging and brilliant biography. Charles Stephen is co-host of "All About Books," heard weekly on NET Radio. HJiM File photo Nobel Prize in 1921.

.5 i Albert Einstein's studies and theories Switzerland and became a Swiss citizen, found a job in the Swiss patent office, married, had a son, and settled down. Except that he wasn't really settled. Physics was his first love, and he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Zurich. Then it was on to Prague, and then, in 1914, despite his hatred of "German rigidity and Prussian parades," he moved to a position in Berlin. When the First World War burst forth, Einstein declared himself a pacifist, saying, "to what de Hardcover FICTION 1.

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"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell 5. "The Glass Castle: A Memoir" by Jeannette Walls National Poetry Month extended a day at Mill Members of the Lincoln Chaparral Poets will read Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the South Mill, 48th Street and Prescott Avenue. The reading is part of the Tuesdays With Writers reading series. It wraps up a celebration of National Poetry Month with an added day to celebrate chap books.

For more information, call the South Mill at 327-9391. lishwoman who spent seven years seeking out Sherman places and history in the American South. Jesse is the main character in this book, but the bloody conflict of America's worst war pervades each chapter, from the horrific description of the casualties of Shiloh to the machinations of Sherman, General U.S. Grant and other Union combatants to finally win the battle ot the Mississippi River by conquering Vicks-burg. The descriptions of the fighting and its aftermath of dead and wounded are as realistic as can be.

Through it all, we see Jesse and her relationships with Union officers and soldiers as a learning process for an angel, and vice versa, though the humans never figure out the truth. If you enjoy this book, look for a sequel, because we only get to the November 1863 march to Chattanooga, leaving more than a year of war to come. Francis Moul, Ph.D., is an environmental historian. Books mailed free. Reserve your copy now: 420-191!) Superb biography of Einstein gives a full portrait of the man of brilliance and quirks "Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson, Simon Schuster, 704 pages, $32 BY CHARLES STEPHEN For the Lincoln Journal Star When studies of the 1919 eclipse of the sun proved Einstein's theory of relativity to be correct, The New York Times wrote a six-tiered headline, including: LIGHTS ALL ASKEW IN THE HEAVENS EINSTEIN THEORYTRI-UMPHS.

This reviewer must confess that physics has always eluded him. Somehow I survived my high school course, but since then, almost 60 years ago, I have avoided it. Some of my best friends are physicists, to be sure, but that doesn't mean I understand what they do. Therefore I get great support from Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of Israel. After crossing the Atlantic in 1921 with Einstein, en route to the latter's first trip to the U.S., he was asked by reporters if, after the many conversations with Einstein on the trip, he understood the theory of relativity.

He replied: "During the crossing, Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and by the time we arrived I was fully convinced that he really understands it." I think this biography of Einstein is superb, even if there are pages one must pass over quickly. It gives us a full portrait of the man he was, a man of brilliance and quirks, a man who often forgot his house key and who on more than one occasion set off on a trip leaving his packed suitcase at home. He was a loner, and said of himself early in his life, "I have never belonged to my country, my house, my friends, or even my immediate family with my whole heart." Born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany, he came to despise authority and the Germanic style, and renounced his citizenship when was 16. "Blind respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth," he would say. A few years later he moved to 'Nineteen "Nineteen Minutes" by Jodi Pi-coult, Atria Books, $26.95 BY JACKIE L00HAUIS Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "In nineteen minutes you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game.

In nineteen minutes you can order a pizza and get it delivered. In nineteen minutes you can get revenge." And with opening sentences like these, in 19 minutes you can hook just about any reader. Best-selling author Jodi Picoult shows just how to do it in her new novel, "Nineteen Minutes." She succeeds despite odds that sometimes seem like a lot higher than 19tol. The odds are tough because Pi-coult's premise flirts dangerously close to the trite in so many ways. She sets her action in the humdrum New Hampshire town of Sterling, where all is, of course, always well.

That is until the day a student walks into the high school and begins shooting. In 19 min 'Changing "Clianging Light" try Nora CmI-Uigher, Pantlwon Press, 223 pages. $22 BY BARBARA RIXSTINE For the Lincoln Journal Star March, 1945. Northern New Mexico. It's the new, temporary home of Eleanor Garrigue, a well-known New York artist.

She has moved west temporarily, first to the Taos colony of Mabel Dodge and then to her own land, bought with money earned from selling paintings her formerly famous husband wanted her to destroy. She is slowly finding herself as a painter, at home in her red-dirt-floored adobe, spoken to by "(t)he varnished cliffs at Arroyo Seco, a twisted cedar, the aspens in October." It is in that landscape that she finds a stranger, half-dead, by the river. She literally drags him home, hoping to winkle out the mystery of his appearance once he's re Minutes' tells of tragic Novel puts angel at battles of America's bloody Civil War brought him worldwide fame and the plorable breed of brutes we belong." Secretly, he told the French writer Romain Rolland that he hoped the Allies would win. His studies and theories brought him worldwide fame and, somewhat belatedly, the Nobel Prize in 1921. Returning from receiving the prize, he stopped in Copenhagen to visit his friend Niels Bohr, the Danish pioneer of quantum theory, about which they disagreed.

The two of them, as Bohr would write, "took the streetcar and talked so animatedly that appears and disappears like phantoms of the school dead. What really caused the mass murder? A father's gun collection? "A gun was nothing without a person behind it," Peter muses when he steals the key to his dad's rifle'cabi-net. Was the deadly fuse lighted by the school bullies or by Peter's mom when she threatened to punish him for not standing up to his tormentors? Were teachers to blame? Or is no one at fault, even the killer? "Who struck the match, Peter?" the boy is asked. "Who didn't," comes the reply. Picoult questions have all been asked before, but never with such skill, sensitivity and depth in novel form.

With much of the story told in flashback, the whole picture emerges like the colors in incendiary to Father Bill, the lo cal parish priest, for help. And Father Bill is happy to help, because as much as he loves his vocation, he's seen nothing that interests him as much as Eleanor. But in time Eleanor realizes she is in love with Leo, and he with her, and how does that work when one has a hus band away in New York, and one is trying to save the world from being blown up? It's an incendiary love story with just a smattering of faith and a real knowledge of how serendipity plays a part in our lives. Gallagher, who grew up in New Mexico, paints a true and honest portrait of the area, the times and the people. While her style may 7S J1 BETTER ANGELS of OUR 7 "Hie Better Angels of Our Nature" by S.C.

Gylanders, Random House, 436 pages, $25.95 BY FRANCIS MOUL For the Lincoln Journal Star An angel protects General William Tecumseh Sherman during the U.S. Civil War. Whoa! Is that anything to wrap a large book around? It is preposterous. And, actually, quite a good and interesting novel. Jesse Davis is a 1 5-year-old boy who somehow attaches himself to Sherman's camp on the eve of the very bloody Battle of Shiloh.

Except that "he" eventually is seen to be an anatomically correct angelic 'she," who enigmatically comes from "far from here." The general sends her to work as an orderly in the battlefield hospital, where she becomes indispensable to the staff, including a sarcastic, war-hating doctor who falls in love with Jesse. That doesn't work with angels. This is a strange plot by an Eng- I we went much too far. We got off and traveled back, but again too far." As C. Snow would later write: "No more profound intellectual debate has ever been conducted." Bohr would win the Nobel Prize in 1922.

By the time of the Second World War both would be safe in the U.S., Bohr having been smuggled out of Denmark ahead of the Nazis. Einstein had arrived earlier. He renounced his German citizenship (again) in 1933, just as Joseph Goebbels was telling a book-burn rampage those old-style children's painting books that gave up their images under brush strokes of cold water. Picoult reveals something else in this novel as well: her mastery of the unexpected. Though her book holds many of the common "cards" played in these kinds of cases the bullying card, the sexual orientation card the author knows how to fake a shuffle.

She deals out enough surprises to successfully bluff just about any reader. The author also delves into the thoughts and feelings of other victims of the tragedy: the killer's parents. When Peter's midwife mother finds that her patients no longer want her touching their newborns because of her son's "taint," Picoult discovers new depths of emotional hell. Those depths would be even darker but for the light she shines into them. Picoult gives us a fresh and thought-provoking new look into a subject we may not really have plumbed before.

love story sometimes be overly stark hers is not a rhythm that sings to this reader she peppers her story with visual nuggets that make the tale worth telling. One such nugget co'mes as Eleanor writes to her husband that she feels like when she first arrived (by car) in New Mexico, with her windows fogged up, only a little patch clear enough through which to see. Gradually, as happens on a windshield, other little patches had cleared so the road ahead became easier to see, but only in fragments, until at one moment, as if by magic, the whole of it was clear and one could see all that was needed." There's a lot of magic In the story, as well as humanity, painting, love, betrayal, politics, history, science and geography as destiny. It's enough to make a great story, and Gallagher tells it well. Barbara Riutim ragreta not living In Paris In the 1930s.

ml I utes, 10 lie dead. It's a scenario ripped from too many headlines. When police capture Peter, the young killer, the excuses he gives for his rampage are familiar, too. Bullying. Teasing.

No one understood him. But then the author steps back from the edge of the cliche quagmire. Her main protagonist, Alex, has an extraordinary pro file: She's a single mother and judge looking to establish a reputation on the local bench. That becomes harder when she sees her daughter Josie's name on the list of student victims. And it becomes harder still when Alex finds that she herself will be the unlikely judge who tries the case.

However, this case is being tried not only by the judge and the jury but by the townsfolk, and ultimately the readers. The evidence Light' is an turned to health. Alas, her stranger, Ieo Kavan, is on the run from the government. The brilliant Czechoslovakian scientist has been involved in making a certain powerful "gadget not far from the adobe, in a small town called Los Alamos. He thought it would be so simple the day he explained it to Kin-stein: secondary neutron experiments.

Chain reaction in uranium and graphite. But he's seen the future; the bomb must not be used. He, and now Eleanor, are in terrible danger, but where can they go? Before revealing his identity, he flees Eleanor's home, looking for someplace anyplace that can harbor him while ne heals. In the meantime, Eleanor turns A Street Named 'O' Mary Jane Nielsen Nostalgia trip for every Uncolnite over 40 Historical ancedotes, reminiscences photos galore Great gift for Mother's Day or Father's Day Book signing May 6th, Edgewood Center 5500 S. 56th St.

jge BTOEJULERS.