Einstein: His Life and Universe (Walter Isaacson)

A fascinating look at Einstein's life. Isaacson seems to have done impeccable research and presents his portrait of Einstein with balance but also with obvious admiration for the amazing man he was. I thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity to learn more about this important character who shaped much of modern life. Isaacson even manages to give a clear overview of the basics of Einstein's science and his thinking about quantum mechanics, with no math and nothing too intimidating. It's not a detailed picture, of course, but enough to get an understanding of what was going on in that wonderful mind. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)

This is the biography of a man who was brilliant, arrogant, sensitive, brutal, charismatic, delusional...a man of contradictions. There is little doubt that Apple is successful because of Steve Jobs. It is also true that he hurt the people around him, mostly deliberately, often with no real reason. He saw the world, including people, in absolute black and white terms: everything, and everyone, was either intolerably awful or amazingly wonderful, often alternately within hours. He had an overarching vision of technology, believing throughout his career in the importance of controlling the user's experience from end to end. He also meddled in every tiny detail of his products, from the precise shade of blue for the shell of the iMac to the finish on the screws inside the unit. Love him or hate him (or both), it is hard to read this story without sheer fascination.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)

This book is half science, half biography. The science part is about the HeLa cell line, made up of the only human cells that grow robustly and eternally in culture. They are cervical cancer cells, and they are enormously valuable to medicine.They can easily be grown to test how diseases work and find cures, how radiation and chemicals attack cell functions, and just generally how cells work. The biography part is about Henrietta Lacks, the poor uneducated black woman whose fatal tumor yielded the sample that started the whole HeLa cell line, and her family. The author describes them in brutal and tender detail, including the violence and ignorance of their lives as well as the faith and courage. She does a marvelous job of blending the two halves, so that each of them is strengthened by the other. I very much enjoyed it.

My life in France (Julia Child & Alex Prud'homme

This memoire covers most of Julia Child's married life, in her own voice (she worked on the book with her grand-nephew, though it was finished after her death). It tells of her falling in love with France and French cooking, getting her diploma from the Cordon Bleu, starting a cooking school, writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and making her TV show, all interwoven with her relationships with family, friends, and great names in the world of food. It is a charming, optimistic book, with only occasional frustration when I couldn't puzzle out the untranslated French phrases. Though many of the classic French dishes she describes didn't sound appealing to me, her joy and enthusiasm are contagious.