Summary and Reviews of Driving Mr Albert by Michael Paterniti

On a cold winter day, during one of my early visits to Dr. Harvey, we drove around Princeton, making the obligatory pilgrimage to 112 Mercer Street, the house where Einstein spent the last twenty years of his life. We sat for awhile with the car running, warm air pouring from the heater, gazing at a modest wood-frame colonial with black shutters on a pleasant block of like houses. More than anything, Einstein said he loved the old place for the light that filled the upstairs rooms and for the gardens out back. He kept pictures of Michaelangelo and Schopenhauer hanging in his study, because, as he said, both men had escaped an everyday life of raw monotony and taken "refuge in a world crowded with images of our own creation."

Sitting in the car, Thomas Harvey recalled hoew the Einstein family gathered here after the scientist's death, how his son, Hans Albert, and Einstein's longtime assistant, Helen Dukas, and Einstein's executor, Otto Nathan, as well as a small group of...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. In the book's epigraph, what traits does Virginia Woolf include for her portrait of a "splendid mind?"
   
   
2. What parallels did you detect between Einstein's life and Harvey's?
   
   
3. Driving Mr. Albert unfolds in some ways like a detective story. What mysteries emerged throughout the book? Were all of them solved?
   
   
4. Do you think Thomas Harvey's true motivation in taking this trip was to deliver the brain to Evelyn? Did he and Michael Paterniti share any unspoken personal goals at this point in their lives? What conflicts was Paterniti able to resolve through this trip?
   
   
5. What did Part One tell you about the author's upbringing? Did his roots prepare him well for this episode in his life? Did his roots in fact lead him to ...