Here is a selection of the new and reissued books about Einstein published this year to celebrate the World Year of Physics.

For those who wish to read the five papers that Einstein produced in 1905, Einstein's Miraculous Year edited by John Stachel (Princeton University Press, $16.95, £10.95) is a good place to start. This new version contains a foreword by Roger Penrose and a new introduction by John Stachel examining Einstein's early life, leading up to the writing of these famous papers.

Alice Calaprice, author of The Quotable Einstein, has now produced The Einstein Almanac (Johns Hopkins University Press, $24.95, £17), a chronological listing of 300 of Einstein's publications spanning the years from 1901 to 1955. These are interspersed with biographic details and other notable news from the world of physics. This is a useful book for Einstein enthusiasts to dip into. Examples of Einstein's more popular writings can be found in the reissued Ideas and Opinions (Souvenir Press, £9.99).

For those seeking to understand the significance of Einstein's papers, Nigel Calder's Einstein's Universe (Penguin, £7.99, $14) has been reissued. Einstein's Cosmos by Michio Kaku (W. W. Norton, $13.95) examines how Einstein's vision transformed our understanding of space and time. A second edition of David C. Cassidy's Einstein and Our World (Humanity Books, $21) places Einstein's work in its scientific and wider cultural context.

Einstein: A Life in Science by Michael White and John Gribbin (Free Press, £7.99), a short biography, makes a reappearance, along with another offering by John Gribbin, this time with Mary Gribbin, Annus Mirabilis (Penguin/Chamberlain Bros, $25.95). This brief biography also includes a reproduction of Einstein's own book Relativity: The Special and General Theory, first published in 1916, and a DVD of the A&E biography of Einstein.

Reviews of other Einstein books appeared in the 20 January issue of Nature (433, 195–197; 2005)