Einstein in Prague

Nature reviews a book with a very narrow focus:  the 16 month period starting in 1911 in which Einstein lived in Prague.  This is in the period between his publishing on special relativity and general relativity.  (When young, I had always assumed that general relativity came first, then special. Seemed a reasonable assumption.)

The reviewer finds the book to be surprisingly good, for the way it discusses the people around Einstein at that time.  For example:

There are quirky observations, almost worthy of playwright Tom Stoppard. For example, Einstein and writer Franz Kafka probably met at a 1911 cultural soirée in the house of Berta Fanta, a “philosophically ambitious” socialite who held a salon above her husband’s pharmacy in Prague’s Old Town Square.

And let's note this, which will no doubt attract some rubbish comment from a reader:

Take Oskar Kraus, a philosopher at the German University. Originally trained in law, he took against Einstein, writing countless articles in philosophy journals unpicking what he saw as egregious internal inconsistencies in relativity. His writing and stance foreshadowed the anti-relativity strand of the Deutsche Physik movement, an eviscerating force in German academia during the rise of the Third Reich. Kraus, who had been born into a Jewish family but converted to Protestantism, was arrested by the Gestapo and ultimately fled to Oxford, UK.