Books

[8], 123 pp. + 8 ads. Orange cloth, deckled fore and tail edges, gilt spine lettering, blind stamped title to front cover. Front hinge and first signature show a bit of play, some handsoil and typical toning to covers, owner's signature (Michael J. Evans?) and bookplate to front endpaper (A. R. Michaelis). Edwin Plimpton Adams trans. First printing of Einstein's public lectures at Princeton University, which were met with great fanfare as the American victory tour of the newly crowned king of modern physics. A massive crowd turned out for the first of these lectures, though attendance dwindled in subsequent lectures as it became clear that even this synthesized overview of relativity remained opaque to all but the most advanced scholars. While Princeton hosted these lectures and held the copyright, Methuen was first to press with the English translation, as they were with Einstein's two previous books. "Neither before nor afterward did he offer a similarly comprehensive exposition that included not only the theory's technical apparatus but also detailed explanations making his achievement accessible to readers with a certain mathematical knowledge but no prior familiarity with relativity theory." - Gutfreund and Renn, *The Formative Years of Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein's Princeton Lectures*.

In 'The Meaning of Relativity', Einstein provides a comprehensive introduction to the fundamental ideas of the general theory of relativity.