Driving Mr Albert

This extraordinary travel book tells the true story of how in 1997 writer Michael Paterniti agreed to take a road trip from New Jersey to California, reuniting the preserved brain of the great scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) with his granddaughter Evelyn. Paterniti’s improbable travelling companion is 84-year-old Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who not only removed Einstein’s brain from his head during the autopsy but purloined it from Princeton Hospital also! Storing the great scientist’s brain in Tupperware zipped inside a grey duffel-bag, they rent a Buick Skylark, and drive from New Jersey to Ohio, Kansas City to Dodge City, Los Alamos to Las Vegas, finally achieving their bizarre reunion in Berkeley, California. A singular journey – and a unique book.