The Private Albert Einstein

Summer vacations, road trips and picnics with an icon of the century are detailed in this recollection of the Bucky and Einstein families' 30-year friendship. With freelance writer Weakland, Bucky--a businessman and son of Einstein's close friend Gustav Bucky-- organizes his material in such chapters as ``Einstein and Religion'' and ``Einstein and His Family,'' and includes sections labeled ``Einstein's Roving Eye'' (which seemed mainly to follow heiresses) and ``Einstein the Poet'' (which covers charming doggerel). Among revelations about Einstein's office furniture, eating habits, dress and musical tastes, the authors suggest that the physicist's longtime secretary, Helen Dukas, may have been his out-of-wedlock daughter by Mileva Maric, or his lover. The book's angle into Einstein's private life ultimately proves narrow: the subject emerges as a less rounded person than the one found in Abraham Pais's Subtle Is the Lord and other biographies. Photos not seen by PW . (June)