Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921. Photo: public domain.

“In case I die, here’s how you release the parachute,” Benyamin Cohen writes, recalling a pilot’s words in his sensational book “The Einstein Effect: How the World’s Favorite Genius Got into Our Cars, Our Bathrooms, and Our Minds.”

Cohen, who is the news director for The Forward, doesn’t overwhelm the book with too much science, and there is good humor. There are also some fascinating things you certainly did not know. Einstein is largely responsible for our current GPS navigation system, even though he could never even drive a car. And the Jewish genius was slovenly and didn’t like to put on fancy clothes.

There’s a great story about Einstein in a Japanese hotel in 1922, who didn’t have cash on him and scribbled notes for a bellhop, telling him it would be worth something in the future. In 2017, it sold for more than $1.5 million.

You likely didn’t know that Hebrew University, the caretaker of the Einstein estate, was paid millions by the Walt Disney company for the right to make and sell a toy called “Baby Einstein.”

There are great interviews with actors Mandy Patinkin and Christopher Lloyd, as well as Avi Loeb. Patinkin works for an organization Einstein helped spearhead, and he has assisted refugees all over the world. Lloyd played the iconic character of Doc Brown in “Back To The Future,” modeled largely after Einstein. Loeb, a fan of Einstein, who teaches at Harvard, is an astronomer and famed researcher who believes aliens have already visited Earth. In the book, he says that Einstein “provided the theoretical framework that allows us to understand the cosmos.”

There’s also an interesting discussion of whether or not some physical aspect of Einstein’s brain allowed him to be smarter than most humans — some think there was, while others disagree. Cohen also explains how he got the job of running Einstein’s social media accounts, and how he ironically had to correct a celebrity who misquoted Einstein in a line about facts.

Then there’s the fact that Einstein had dark humor. Cohen writes that when the Nazis put a bounty on his head, Einstein joked: “I didn’t know I was worth so much.”

Of a number of good quotes Cohen includes, perhaps the best one is what Einstein said as a commencement speaker at a graduation: “There is separation of colored people from white people in the United States. That separation is not a disease of colored people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it,”

In channeling his inner Einstein, Cohen writes that he dressed in pajamas and conducted his regular business. “The Einstein Effect” is a timely and important book that may inspire you to come up with an ingenious theory or simply grow your hair out. It’s a fun read, and pretty informative.