Me, Myself & Einstein's Brain

A LONG TRIP WITH A BIG NOODLE

It is the aspiration of every young American writer, it seems, to write a book about driving across the country, hot on the tail of deep meaning. Journalist Michael Paterniti neatly sidesteps most of the pitfalls of the genre in Driving Mr. Albert, thanks to his highly unusual traveling companions: Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who performed Albert Einstein's autopsy in 1955, and Einstein's brain, which Harvey took or stole and has now transferred from a glass cookie jar to a Tupperware bowl full of formaldehyde. While Harvey's rather oblique personality saps the book of some of its potential emotionality, Patemiti the sociologist nimbly fills in the gap, using the passing landscape as a springboard for much beguiling Einstein legacy and lore (e.g., we learn that young Einstein, more interested in things than in people, and crestfallen at the sight of his newborn sister, peered at her tiny body and asked, "Yes, but where are its wheels?").

Part travelogue, part biography, this highly absorbing work is ultimately a cautionary tale: "He liked the fatty foods, you know," says Harvey of the father of relativity. "That's what he died of." Geniuses and butter enthusiasts, take note. (Rating: ★★★)HENRY ALFORD