(Reviewed by JD Jung)
I first heard about this book the way all the best recommendations happen — from a stranger in a secondhand bookstore. During a visit to Nashville, I ducked into Defunct Books and asked the bookseller for an underrated read. He had a soft spot for road trip stories, and this was one of his picks. I’m glad I listened.
Driving Mr. Albert is the true story of journalist Michael Paterniti chauffeuring elderly pathologist Dr. Thomas Harvey across the United States — with Albert Einstein’s brain riding along in the trunk, chopped into 240 pieces and stored in two cookie jars. Yes, really.
When Einstein died in 1955, Harvey performed the autopsy and kept the brain, convinced he could find physical proof of the great man’s genius. Decades later, still with the brain and no scientific proof to substantiate his theory, Harvey and Paterniti hit the road to deliver it to Einstein’s granddaughter, Evelyn.
If you’re hoping for a tight, propulsive road trip narrative, you might find the pacing a bit loose — Paterniti has a habit of tangents. Some can be forgotten. But some of those tangents are the best parts. A stop in Lawrence, Kansas to visit Harvey’s old neighbor William S. Burroughs, father of the Beat Generation, just months before Burroughs died, is exactly the kind of strange detour that makes this book memorable.
What really hooked me were the characters. Harvey especially — a man who lost his medical license and ended up working a plastics factory floor for $8 an hour, all while Einstein’s brain sat quietly at home.
Weird, warm, and genuinely one-of-a-kind. Highly recommended.