Hundreds of books and thousands of articles have been written about Albert Einstein. What new can be said about the life and work of the author of the theory of relativity? It turns out that there are facts of his biography that are not described fully enough, and sometimes incorrectly. Take, for example, the story of the scientist’s expulsion from the Prussian Academy of Sciences or Einstein’s difficult relationship with another famous physicist, Philipp Lenard, who at the end of his life became a convinced Nazi and the father of the racist “German physics”. The work offered to the reader, based on numerous documents, tells how everything really happened. The book is written in a genre reminiscent of Plutarch's Comparative Lives. The fates of famous people are shown in the context of history, which helps to appreciate both the prophetic gift of the great physicist and the confusion of the minds of many intellectuals, for example, Thomas Mann, who did not immediately find the right path at turning points in the development of society, when democracy was suddenly replaced by a ruthless dictatorship.