Book Description

An extraordinary volume of never-before-published letters written by one of America's most beloved scientists.

Richard P. Feynman, brilliant physicist and beloved teacher, is an iconic figure in the world of science. Born in 1918 in Brooklyn, Feynman received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1942. Despite his youth, he played an important part in the Manhattan Project during World War II, going on to teach at both Cornell and the California Institute of Technology, and winning the Nobel Prize in physics in 1965 for his research in quantum electrodynamics. Many remember his work on the Challenger commission, in particular his famous O-ring experiment, which required nothing more than a glass of ice water. Besides his work as a physicist, Feynman was at various times an artist, dancer, bongo player, and lock picker.

While there have been many books celebrating his myriad scientific achievements and personal eccentricities, his personal correspondence has remained largely hidden from view buried in the archive at Caltech or locked in a box in his daughter's Pasadena home. Now, for the first time, we have the privilege of reading his wonderful letters to students, long-lost relatives, former lovers, crackpots, colleagues, and die-hard fans. From his early love letters to his first wife Arline, who died at Los Alamos of tuberculosis, to his decades-long attempt to resign from the National Academy of Sciences, Feynman shares his views on feminism, fatherhood and everything in between. These letters, which span a full half-century, tell the story of a marvelous and inventive life, and reveal the pathos and wisdom of a man many felt close to but few really knew. By turns abrasive and charming, intimate and inspiring, we see the many sides of Richard Feynman, and treasure him all the more. ... Read more

Amazon.com

A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to anautobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of receivedwisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88)cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestsellerever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (readthe chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant ofstupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (checkout "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You JustAsk Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible toenjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch ofhilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. Atsome point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all themerriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authenticknowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give upon seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideasthat have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had allthese qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and vervein his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around theworld--adored him. --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Reviews (156)

It's Good To Be Feynman!
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" is a very interesting book. The many amusing and captivating stories in this autobiography keep you wanting to read more. I personally had a hard time putting this book down every night. Even though I started reading this for a physics project it turned out to be a very entertaining assignment due to the many diverse topics discussed in the book. The subjects discussed range from physics to biology and even touching on hypnosis in one chapter. The book starts out by telling how he acted growing up and then went on to tell about his college life and eventually went all the way to his adult life. This book is a humorous look at the world of science through the eyes of one of the greatest physicists of all time, Richard P. Feynman. It is a must read for anyone interested in any science related field.

In his own words
Although I'd heard of Feynman for years now--people I know were excited by the Feynman Lectures volumes--I didn't really know who he was. Oh, I could probably have given you the fact that he was a physicist, and maybe that he had won the Nobel prize, and just recently Jill told me about a Feynman anecdote that she had read by Stephen Jay Gould. After Surely You're Joking, I know much more about Feynman, and why he interests people. As far from the stereotype of the scientist that you can get, yet still having some geeky characteristics that he wasn't afraid to admit to, Surely You're Joking is a portrait of the man in his own words. In fact, the best way to approach this book is as if you had stumbled on to it in a dimly-lit bar, sat down next to it, exchanging turns buying drinks and talking about each other. Just like a conversation, some things are funny, some things don't make sense, and--as a one-sided conversation--they all revolve around a singe subject.

Just plain hilarious!
I can't see why so many idiots give Feynman's books bad reviews and say "the guy is OVERRATED man!" These people are probably just jealous because Feynman was UNDOUBTEDLY the coolest smart-person who ever lived. Moreover, this is the book which provides conclusive proof of that fact. Anyone who says Feynman was overrated is blatantly wrong -- In fact, I have been interning at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, where I met a man named Don Thompson who actually met Feynman when he did his post-doctoral work at Caltech. As Don says, "Feynman was just as funny, brilliant, and vibrant as all the books and accounts say he was." So, buy this book, and don't believe all the idiots who give it bad reviews.

Wonderful!
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It really gave dimension to a man I've heard so many stories about from my father in law. My husband got a kick out of seeing me read the book too. He had read it a few years ago and after I would finish a chapter he'd want to chit-chat about what I had just read.

Greatest autobiography ever!
The book is just great. It has a great humorous and adventurous side and shows the reader what an interesting character Richard Feynman was, totally different from the awkward sterotype by which people relate to scientists. Feynman is very candid and speaks his mind, and the book is a very colorful account of his adventures and experiments with different circumstances. I'll recommend the book to everyone, not just those who are interested in science. The book really shows how much a person can do in one life. Even if one bit of Feynman's personality rubs off on you, this book would be twice worth itself.

Comparing this book to 'A beautiful mind' about John F. Nash, I can see a big difference in the fact that I didn't keep this book down for even a second, while 'a beautiful mind' (a boring description of the boring life of a generally boring person) is lying somewhere gathering dust ever since I read the first chapter. ... Read more

Book Description

The best-selling sequel to "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"--funny, poignant, instructive. One of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century, Richard Feynman possessed an unquenchable thirst for adventure and an unparalleled ability to tell the stories of his life. "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" is Feynman's last literary legacy, which he prepared as he struggled with cancer. Among its many tales--some funny, others intensely moving--we meet Feynman's first wife, Arlene, who taught him of love's irreducible mystery as she lay dying in a hospital bed while he worked nearby on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. We are also given a fascinating narrative of the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger's explosion in 1986, and we relive the moment when Feynman revealed the disaster's cause by an elegant experiment: dropping a ring of rubber into a glass of cold water and pulling it out, misshapen. A New York Times bestseller. ... Read more

Reviews (35)

¿Continuation of a curious character¿
This book is a continuation and addendum of sorts to Mr. Feynman's first biography, "Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman". The two major stories of the book involve Mr. Feynman's enormously influential first wife, Arlene and the second story involves Mr. Feynman's work in the Challenger disaster investigation. Sprinkled around these two major bookends are other humorous adventures and observations about a trip to Japan, being labeled a sexist pig by feminists, and hotel hunting in Europe to name just a few.

The Challenger investigation takes up a sizable chunk of the book and is sometimes filled with drier material. But the compelling event and frustrating insight into government bureaucracy holds some interest to make up for the technical specifications.

The first part of the book where his wife Arlene is discussed is so touching and powerful that the reader will be hard pressed not to get teary-eyed.

As noted in the review about the first biography, Mr. Feynman was an extremely curious person who explored things out of simple curiosity. His life's quest was nothing simpler than a desire to understand Nature. All the while, he tried to have the best time he could. Hopefully this reader can take away at least a little bit of that.

Scientific background is not a prerequisite
A lot of books written by scientific people claim to be "down-to-earth" and for the "layman" but end up creeping into the obscure. Not so here. Feynman starts with his feet planted firmly on the ground and never strays.

The first few stories range from the serious to the light-hearted. From the pain of losing his wife to being invited to speak at a funeral for a man whom he can't remember. These accounts give you a good look at the ability of Feynman to convey a story and make it interesting. The majority of the book however is given to the time he spent on the committee that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Using no nonsense, straight-forward writing he takes you through the process of how he and the others, despite a lot of bureaucratic red tape, managed to find out what went wrong on that fateful day. What could very well be a dry and uninspiring subject becomes quite informative and engaging through his telling.

This is my first book by Feynman, but having absorbed the whole thing in one sitting it surely won't be my last.

Not Joking this time
The follow-up to the successful, "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman" this book offers four pretty distinct parts.

First section describes how his father taught him to think about the world and his father's ambition to make young Richard a scientist. The end of the book is Feyman's case for the importance of science. In between we get the sad, but sweet story of his first wife and the utterly compelling story of his time on the committee investigating the challenger explosion. It was my favorite part of the book.

The description of how government committees decide facts and make recommendations was eye opening. It was the best description of how these things work that I've ever read. Feynman was constantly up against a committee chairman that wanted to keep everyone in a room asking questions of experts. Feynman didn't like that setup. He wanted to travel out to NASA and talk to engineers, so he did.

Going to Huston and Canaveral, Feynman learned something about the nature of NASA that probably goes for any big organization. He found that NASA was a unified force when their goal was putting a man of the moon. Information was shared freely and appreciated at every level. Once that goal was met NASA became compartmentalized.

Leaders at the top spent their time reassuring Congress that NASA would achieve their goals with low costs and high safety. Engineers at the bottom realized that this wasn't entirely possible. The middle managers didn't want to hear the challenges because they would be forced to report it to the top bosses who didn't want to hear it. It was much easier for top bosses to paint a rosy picture to Congress if they were unaware of the actual challenges of making it work. The end result was that top bosses said that the likelihood of a mission death was 1-100,000 while engineers on the ground felt that the likelihood was more like 1-300.

Feynman concludes that maybe the shuttle program was a bad idea. It could never live up to the ambitious projections of the leaders and the American public was being lied to. NASA should be honest with the American people, Feynman thought, then Congress and voters can decide if they are getting enough for their money. It was a surprisingly thing to hear from an advocate of science and discovery. But Feynam reckoned that the amount of science and discovery has been little compared to the cost. He complained years after the first shuttle launch he still hadn't read any significant experiments in scientific journals.

In all, I liked this book a little better than "Surely You're Joking." It was a little more thought provoking than those fun tales.

Interesting follow up
This book is the follow on to the book "Surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman". In the first book there was a time line that progressed from youth to Professor at Caltech. This book is much different in that 45% of the book describes his pre- 1986 life and 55% describes his involvement in the Challenger shuttle accident investigation. This investigation was a mere 2 years of his life (and the final 2 years as well). The same brilliant character shines through in both parts of this book. There are many interesting vignettes of this iconoclast that are not in the first book. The most interesting part is the description of his relationship with his first wife Arlene who succumbed to TB while he was still a young man. He really had a great heart for those close to him. He didn't suffer fools willingly and often was abrupt to the point of rudeness. More interesting observations are available at feynmanonline^com. Detailed there is a more balanced view of the man and his foibles.

Hero worship can blind you to reality
Yes, Feynman was brilliant. Yes, Feynman revolutionized the teaching of physics. Yes, he seems to have been a delightful, charming, handsome, womanizing, fun guy to hang out with. But the Feynman cottage industry ran dry a long time ago. I expect his grocery lists to be published any day now to feed the insatiable hunger for anything that he touched. The essays and articles in this book are bland and nearly worthless. One is introduced as "uproarious." Uproarious is defined as "provoking hilarity." If you think anecdotes about Feynman running up a stairway to bring his heart rate up are hilarious, you are easily amused. This book was a complete waste of time and money. ... Read more

Amazon.com

If you've read any of Richard Feynman's wonderful autobiographies you may think that a biography of Feynmanwould be a waste of your time. Wrong! Gleick's Genius is a masterpiece of scientific biography--and an inspiration to anyone in pursuit of their own fulfillment as a person of genius. Deservedly nominated for a National Book Award, underservedly passed over by the committee in the face of tough competition, and very deservedly a book that you must read. ... Read more

Reviews (32)

Excellent companion to Feynman's own writing
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Gleick
Q: "I read both of Feynman's autobiographies! Why would I need to read a biography?"
A: "Because it's awesome."

Gleick, firstly, goes far deeper into Feynman's life than Feynman did. Feynman didn't consider his books to be autobiographies; they were "Adventures of a curious character." They were a few hilarious events picked from his long, full life.

Gleick's book covers many of the hilarious aspects, but also covers the painful and formative aspects. Also curiously missing from Feynman's books were his science. Feynman wrote about his adventures, Gleick covered the adventures, the disasters, and the science.

Brilliant, enthralling reading. Highly recommending to anyone who enjoyed Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Which is, in turn, recommended to anyone who likes funny stories. It reads fast, BTW.)

The life and times of a " half buffoon , half genius "
James Gleick's life of Feynman comes highly recommended to anyone concerned with the scholarship of safe-cracking , impromptu Brazilian samba ensembles and the fineries of quantum electrodynamics . Space shuttle design and the Manhattan Project are also included , so that no critic can claim in any seriousness that Feynman lacked balanced life-experience. This book is highly and competently researched ( 70-odd pages devoted to notes , acknowledgements and bibliography ) but it is no mere archive - there is a sense of presence in Gleick's narrative which , at times , borders on the voyeuristic (see , for example , the chapters detailing the correspondence between Feynman and his first wife Arline while he , shrouded in systematic censorship and effectively isolated , worked on the Bomb and she died slowly of consumption.) His account of Feynman's physics is similarly uncanny, making esoteric and , dare I say it , deep , theoretical material accessible to non-specialists . Perhaps this success in transmitting his ideas in a second-hand fashion is due to some aspect of the nature of Feynman's thinking - he was what might be called a ' freehand ' theoretician , prepared to step outside the realm of the accepted processes in order to see new ways of achieving old results , and thus to reconfigure the family-tree of physics and open new branches of inquiry . His closest rival for much of his career , Julian Schwinger , also comes across as his antithesis - Gleick , in any case , would have us believe in two incompatible minds , in Feynman the intuitive doodler and Schwinger the rigorous draftsman , both working to slice the same pie but with different mental utensils , one with a machete and the other with a laser . This was an academic showdown of the first order and one of the more compelling themes in the book . Compiling the life of an arch-scientist with a penchant for percussion and amateur safe-cracking is no mean feat . Feynman was enigmatic as an individual , to say the least , but this book goes! a lot of the way to answering , in the positive , the old freshman question " IS FEYNMAN HUMAN ? "

A Real Genius!
Richard Feynman is certainly one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century,one who belongs to the small group of the chosen few(Einstein,Bohr,Pauli ,among others)and one who fully deserves to be called a genius!His biography by James Gleick is nothing short of excellent:it is very well documented and very well written.For those who want to understand the role played by Feynman in the advancement of modern physics, and especially in the genesis of the theory of Quantum Electrodynamics,this book is a must!It also gives a thorough account of Feynman's life, which makes very good reading ,even if one is not interested in physics...
But a five- hundred- page book will always contain a few paragraphs which are not at the same level as the rest of the book!One such paragraph will be found at page 177,where the author wastes the reader's time in explaining Hans Bethe's mental calculation ability in the "squares-near-fifty trick".Apart from the fact that this sort of ability has nothing to do with genius and is within reach of any intelligent High School student,James Gleick explains it wrongly!He says that"...the difference between two successive squares is always an odd number,the sum of the numbers being squared.That fact,and the fact that 50 is half of 100,gave rise to the squares-near-fifty trick".In fact ,the trick is based on the "remarkable identity" (50+/-a)^2=2500+/-100*a+a^2.Nothing to do with the difference of two successive squares!

Fortunately,the book does not contain many passages like this one!

mediocre
Gleick's biography of Feynman is certainly palatable for even non-techical readers... however, if you're interested in Feynman as a person, you're far better off reading it in Feynman's words: "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman"... not only was that book much funnier and an immense joy to read, but you get a much better feel for a lot of the anecdotes that are relayed again in Gleick's book.

If you're interested in learning about the history of QED and Feynman's hand in its development, this book is a nice teaser, but it really doesn't go into much depth. It focuses too much on the shallow rivalries between the physicists of that time, without really making clear what the developments were or how they were developed.

Captures Feynman Folklore but Fails to Put Him into Context
This is a fun book, hard to put down, and is comparable to a romance novel or a so-called "chick flick"--with unfortunately about as much depth. If you are a Feynman fan or a Physics fan or someone who is considering Physics as a career--this book is 5 stars. What the author omits one can can figure out,if you already know quite a bit. I dropped out of Physics as I preferred reading about the great Physicists to working through the problems in the Electricity and Magnetism or Quantum Mechanics texts, and did not have the feel for all those waveicles.

Since my brother was for a time a theoretical Physicist I heard much of the Feynman folklore. Gleick captured the folklore quite well. But the power and influence of the famous lectures given by Feynman to Caltech freshman and sophomore Physics students(known simply as Feynman's Lectures)was understated. During the last half of the 60s and through the 70s it would be hard not to find Physics Graduate students at the elite Universities (Chicago,MIT and so on) intensely studying Feynman's lectures as preparation for their PHD comps. This is so well known that the conceitful dream of other introductory text writers such as Samuelson in Economics, is to have the same role in their field.

The real shortcoming of the book is that it is a 90% solution. It would be interesting to have compared him with other Physics theoreticans--as a group. They are quite similar in many ways. You look at the famous and not so famous in that area and they have a set of commonalities. They will have self-taught themselves Mathematical subjects and found those challenges less exciting than understanding the physical world. In fact,that is the rationale of their existence, at least for a time. They all need to be do-it-themselfers. Many are great puzzle solvers in other contexts. They almost all had a certain kind of nurturing to encourage them to develop their talents along the way. The author leaves the false impression that these are special characteristics of Feynman. They are not--he is special enough in his achievement.

The title genius in that already extremely intelligent group goes to those, like Feynman's fellow Noble recipients for developing Quantum ElectroDynamics (QED),who learned the regular stuff/theory so well they were smart enough to figure out difficult solutions for the problem that was implicit in the prior theory. The rarer type of genius is the Feynman treated the problem as if he had figured out just enough to know what the problem was and used novel means (now known as Feynman diagrams)to solve the problem--ignoring the powerful but obscuring technology developed by those who came before and developing new more usable tools.

Despite its originality Feynman did not regard the QED in the same light as his discovery (independent initially of his fellow Cal Tech professor Gell Mann)of a theory of weak interactions. But he regarded his Lectures in Physics as his great contribution--no where could you get that from Gleick. A very interesting oversight was that Gell-Mann suffered writers block but was emersed in the standard literature. But Feynman often worked things out but would not work them out in publishable form but when they were forced to work together they did very well indeed. This relationship should have been explored in more depth. I wondered did Gell-Mann serve as the filter to let some of the standard work or not?

The late great contemplative Thomas Merton kept himself cut out from the news while in the monestary except that which was shared with him by friends such as the Berrigan brothers and James Forest. Did Feynman have similar friends or associates who informed him of problems out in the Physics world he might be interested in? Feynmann appeared to have few lifelong friends beyond family if you listened only to Gleick, but some of his sometime collaborators seemed to have been friends, but not of long standing.

This book generates more questions than answers and adds too little to the knowledge of Feynman but synthesizes quite well. Good work, well written but not up to the clarity or completeness standards of the subject. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

From Physics to Touva!
My reading of "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman" was surely "forced" me to read the life of Richard Feynman furthermore: NO ORDINARY GENIUS is a GREAT BOOK. Family, friends and colleagues of Feynman share their views regarding the genius (with bump's-language-style) Feynman. The photos are great and can make a good spot on his life. Truly inspiring especially when he stated that he's an irresponsible man! And also, he couldnt stop to do physics until several days before his death: he's still doing the physics in 70. Feynman also brought the tiny-state named TOUVA to the world: even a geographic teacher wouldn't know bout this region! Buy this book, okay?

fun character fun book!
This book made me laughed and it made me cry but most importantly it taught me a lot, not just about feynman but a lot more other stuff like science, life, having fun and reminded me why I got into science in the first place. It was very inpirational as well as fun.

If you want to know a little about what feynman was like, then you must read this book. I said
"little" because there is no way you will ever get to know this man just by reading a book. This book was really good at taking out the really good stuff from other books and integrating it.

I like what his friends and family had to say about him and adventures they had, as much as when Feynman was quoted. It is
really interesting and gives you a really deep insight on stuff he may not had put into his other books.

Even if you don't like to read biographies, or care about feynman, you could read this book like a novel. Its little
stories are so interesting funny (sometimes sad) that you forget that you are reading a biography. I say this because
reading biogrphies usually gets me bored. Not this one however, its and adventure!

After I read this book I felt like I lost a friend and mentor--it was that good or perhaps feyman's life was that interesting--I actually missed a guy I never met before! It sounds flaky, but I guessed Feynman would had liked it that way!

Alex Lee
...

A Superb Introduction to an Under-Appreciated Man
Richard Feynman was a remarkable man who lived many remarkable lives, most of which are succinctly summarized in this fast, engaging read. Relying upon testimonials from close friends and associates of Feynman's and mostly from Feynman's own recollections, No Ordinary Genius delves into each of these lives, including Feynman's childhood obsession with finding out how things worked (a trait inherited from his father), his work at Los Alamos both as the keeper of the keys to the mainframe processing the mathematical calculations for the Manhattan Project and as the head of on campus hi-jinx and safe-cracking, his Nobel Prize for developing the field of Quantum electrodynamics (and along the way the now famous "Feynman diagrams" which have become the physicist's graphical tool for "viewing" sub-atomic activity), his very early visionary forays into what has become nanotechnology, and his ability to buck the NASA bureaucracy and quickly get to the bottom of what really went wrong with the 1986 Challenger disaster. Along the way we learn of his love of people (including his two wives, the first of whom died when she was only about 20 years old of TB), of life, and of physics (though probably not in that order), and what begins to emerge is a rare character, a multi-dimensional, and apparently "human" genius-one with foibles like anyone else...but one surprisingly devoid (at least as Sykes's book of recollections would have us believe) of the peccadilloes and neuroses of similarly brilliant historic figures. In fact one wonders whether Feynman's relative "normalcy" may have prevented him from being more widely known outside of scientific circles. This is itself somewhat ironic as Feynman was not just a brilliant physicist in his own right, but was perhaps the greatest interpreter (and hence most accessible) of all physicists who tried to explain how the world really worked to the rest of us.

Feynman was often criticized for not giving greater weight to the moral consequences of the actions of scientists like him who were responsible for creating "the" Bomb. At one point toward the end of the book, and partially in response to this question about the morality of scientific progress, Feynman observes the interesting irony that it's only in the most free, open, and democratic societies (i.e, the U.S.) that computers capable of infringing the most upon individuals' privacy have been developed. I.e., the countries that would have stood to benefit the most from this advanced "snooping" technology (i.e., the USSR, China, etc.) during Feynman's Cold War days, weren't able to produce the requisite technological infrastructure.

Later, towards the end of the book, the Nobel laureate, Marvin Minsky speaks about a feeling he and Feynman shared about man's soul. "Now here you are, a person, and thirty thousand genes or more are working to make the brain, the most complicated organ. If you were to say it's just a spirit, just a soul, just a little hard diamondlike point with no structure, a gift from some creator, it's so degrading! It means that all of the sacrifice by all of our animal ancestors is ignored. It seems to me [any by implication, Feynman] that the religious view is the opposite of self-respect and understanding. It's taking the brain with a hundred billion neurons, and not using it. What a paradoxical thing to be taught to do!"

So at once you have Feynman then specifying democracy and freedom as the necessary precursors to allow for scientific innovation. Then later he's demonstrating his "belief" in the pre-eminence of reason over non-fact-based belief and religion. Though non-Objectivists and spiritualists could debate his point-of-view, it is particularly refreshing to observe in thought and action a true seeker of the way things truly work. In many respects, Richard Feynman was Ayn Rand's John Gault.

This book should be read as a precursor to getting to know one of the great characters of the 20th century. But it won't suffice if one really wants to understand his genius. For that, one has to read his two books of "Six Easy Pieces", his lecture on Quantum Electrodynamics, or most appropriately of all, his Lectures on Physics.

Does it even need one ???
Does a book on the one of the greatest person to have lived need a review. Even a badly written book about Feynmam would be fun to read ! and this is one of the better written one. My only wish is that every person gets to read about this fascinating person.

A MUST for Feynman fans everywhere!
This is a wonderful book for all those individuals who are even remotely interested in the life of the great Richard P. Feynman. It is illustrated with pictures that cover the entire scope of his life; from his earliest days as a boy all the way up to his final years.

The book is mostly a collage of anecdotes and commentary written by a slew of people from all walks of life. We hear from an artist friend of his, Feynman's musician friends, his sister Joan (who herself received a Ph.D. from Syracuse university) and his daughter, as well as the memories of such distinguished colleagues as Freeman Dyson, Hans Bethe and Marvin Minsky.

So order this book, borrow this book, do whatever you have to do to read & enjoy it. Come, take a tour of the life of a humble & friendly (and extraordinary) genius. You owe it to yourself. ... Read more

Book Description

A moving story of Richard Feynman and his friend Ralph Leighton's attempts to reach the land of Tannu Tuva.An adventure that is sure to inspire everyone.Well written and imaginative, this book is essential for fans of Feynman. Includes a 5-minute soundsheet of Tuvan throat-singing. ... Read more

Reviews (25)

Extremely pleasant and informative book on lost land of Tuva
When I was a kid in the 1950s I collected stamps and had quite a few from a mysterious little land called "Tannu Tuva". It always intrigued me because though I could find it on the old globe we had at home (made before the USSR swallowed the unfortunate Tuvans in 1944)I never heard the slightest news from there, nor did I ever hear of anyone going or coming from that little red country sandwiched between the yellow Soviet Union and green Mongolia. Time passed. A lot of time. Fast forward in fact, forty years. One day I saw a new book advertised--TUVA OR BUST. I could scarcely believe that somebody else in America remembered that hapless little country that once issued diamond and triangle stamps with yaks, camels, archers, and horsemen on them. Yet, they had it at our local bookstore. I bought it and read it as soon as I got home. What a treat ! I had never heard of Richard Feynman, not being a physics aficionado, but he turned out to be a great character. I enjoyed reading about his years-long efforts with Ralph Leighton to get to Tuva. They went through all kinds of trouble and interesting side voyages. I strongly recommend that you read this book. For me, reading the book was only a beginning. I listened to the plastic disc of Tuvan throat singing that came with the book, and subsequently bought tapes and attended Tuvan concerts by the group Huun Huur Tu in Boston. I also became a "Friend of Tuva". You can find their website on the net. I still drive around with my 'Tuva or Bust' bumper sticker. All of this stemmed from reading this delightful book on a faraway, unknown country and two people's adventures trying to get there. A very pleasurable experience.

funny, informative, and even a little inspiring
"Tuva or Bust!" is the story of three friends in the 1980s, who were determined to travel to Tuva, a little known land in Central Asia, which at that time was part of the Soviet Union. Their original motivation? As Richard Feynman says in the first chapter, "A place that's spelled K-Y-Z-Y-L (Tuva's capitol) has just got to be interesting!"

The book chronicles the adventures and misadventures of Ralph Leighton, one of Feynman's longtime friends. Though the book is subtitled "Richard Feynman's Last Journey," it's really Leighton's story; Feynman is more of an inspiration and a supporting character. Over several years, Leighton and his friends wrote letters, researched articles, read books, and became more and more fascinated by Tuva, a tiny country in the middle of nowhere. They learned, among other things, that Tuvans practice three different types of steppe herding lifestyles, within a hundred miles of each other, and that Tuva is the home of throat-singing, a musical technique in which a single person produces two notes at the same time.

Leighton's narration is chatty, reminiscent of Feynman's autobiographical works; one suspects Leighton learned to tell anecdotes from his friend. However, Leighton isn't as inherently fascinating a narrator as Feynman. Also, Feynman's persistent cancer, which kept him from participating in several preliminary trips, and finally killed him shortly before Leighton received permission for a group of Americans to travel to Tuva itself, casts a pall over the book.

Still, this is a fascinating story -- a great example of what people can do if they really care about a cause, and don't realize precisely how little chance they have of succeeding. It is also informative, if somewhat superficial in its description of Tuvan culture; I now want to know more about Central Asian peoples, and Tuvans in particular. But while the chapter "Reflections 2000," included in the new paperback version of "Tuva or Bust!" is interesting, I really don't think it was fair of Leighton to mention a new idea for a Tuvan monument to Feynman, and refuse to give any details. Now I want another reprint!

Something To Do
A peculiar book: Ralph Leighton's TUVA OR BUST isn't really about Richard Feynman, who, the more one reads about him, begins to seem a genius, yes, but more than a little insufferable. He does instigate this whimsical notion of visiting Tannu Tuva (which had become Tuvinskaya of the U.S.S.R. (the book takes place from the late 1970s to Feynman's death in 1989), but the ball is picked up by Leighton, and Feynman is merely a supporting actor in the book.

The quest carries itself through many frustrations, mostly having to do w/ the hermetic paranoia of the Soviet Union, which seems to work like an enormous rural county: If you know someone, then things can be smoothed out; if not, then the official channels will be little help.

I'm not sure why anyone would read this book. There's no reason to if you're interested in Feynman, because, besides his concoctions to fit in at Esalen, amongst the New Age mumbo-jumbo, his mind is absent from the book. His personality & his drumming are there on occasion, but Feynman's thinking, no.

Leighton is not intrinsically interesting, and though a fluent writer, gives little sense of character. All the foreigners are forgettable, so the index is very handy. When a name turns up on page 150, say, then one can look it up to see which person this is.

As one reads, one begins to have the same thoughts about oneself that one has about Leighton's attempts to visit Tuva: Why am I going on?. Moreover, I think that one comes up with the same answer: Just to get through the damn thing. By the time that Leighton reaches Tuva (without Feynman, who died just a smidgen too soon), the appearance is anti-climactic, and the land is colorless: A Nevada trailer-park suburb, but with yurts instead of double-wides.

TUVA OR BUST! becomes a critique of bureaucracy. The slow, spirit-killing, mind-numbing bureaucracy of the Soviet Union ensured that Feynman would die without reaching Tuva. Our world, in which stupid little men can control our lives, is death to the spirit, and is death to the spirit of Feynman, insufferable though he may be, and inexplicably kow-towed to by everyone (you get the feeling that Feynman never opens a door for anyone or shuts one for himself).

TUVA OR BUST!, in its pedestrian prose, preaches, unwittingly, I think, for a freedom for whimsy, for the spirit, for the individual. At the same time, excepting the author and his male friends (his wife is also colorless), the book has no individuals. So, by the end, nothing: No Tuva to speak of, no more Feynman, nothing but an accomplishment to scratch off the list.

Mostly Great, But Slightly Condescending!
Did you know of certain artists who painted scenes on a human hair! Yes, bring your magnifying glass! Or singing in 2 part harmony with only one singer! I surely did not before reading this book! However, as a stamp collector starting at a very young age (about 7) , I also was fascinated by the Tanna Tuva stamps, and still have a nice assortment of diamonds and triangles. This book is an amusing and informative read, not least in its descriptions of meetings between Soviet and western scholars during some of the "Bad Old Days" of the 1980's Cold War, including moments like the shooting of KAL 007 near Korea. At times , though, there does seem to be a slightly condescending attitude towards a small section of Siberia based on what seems "funny" to English speakers. Nonetheless a very worthwhile read, with many amusing anecdotes, not to mention the amazing cancer recovery attitude of Mr. Feynmann himself!

Feynman's inspiration...
If you're reading this review, you've probably read dozens of witicisms from Richard Feynman, one of science's most colorful characters. Though the name suggests otherwise, this is really about a Feynman inspired journey.

Ralph Leighton and Richard Feynman spot a stamp from Tuva, which inspires Leighton's journey around the world. What makes the book an interesting read is that you can easily follow Feyman's curious energy in the actions and writing of the author. This really brings the heart of the book's value - this type of intellectual curiosity is not just the property of Richard Feynman. Anyone can chase a journey because it's fun or because it's there.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and hope that you do too. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Richard Feynman himself...
With this new book collecting Richard Feynman's correspondence, you won't only better know about a Nobel laureate physicist, but you will be able to appreciate the deepest insight, knowledge and inspiration of an honest man. From his first beloved wife or the Manhattan project to motivation and good understanding of Physics. I have loved Feynman since I first read one of R. Leighton books when I was a teenager, he inspired and encouraged me a lot and since I had a great interest in Science I eventually fell in love with Physics, which I'm studying know, thanks to him. Besides, his wise guide helped me out to understand life better and cope with difficulties, mostly tackling problems à-la Feynman. This book is worth reading and it's quite big with hardcover so the price is quite great!

Everybody interested in Feynman biography and character cannot miss this chance to meet him at his most personal book for which we all should thank his daughter Michelle Feynman. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR MAKING THE WORLD WISER ABOUT A GREAT SCIENTIST AND HUMAN BEING. ... Read more

Book Description

Few would argue that Richard Feynman was one of the greatest American-born theoretical physicists of the twentieth century, and fewer still would dispute that he was the most iconoclastic. In the words of the eminent mathematician Mark Kac, geniuses are of two kinds: the ordinary, and the magicians. Feynman was a magician of the highest caliber. No one could guess how his mind worked, how he could make transcendental leaps of the imagination so fearlessly. A true original, Feynman was both an inspired, Nobel-prize winning pioneer, and a born showman. He never lost sight of his vision of science as "a long history of learning how not to fool ourselves."

The Beat of a Different Drum is a superb account of Feynman's life and work, encompassing a singular career that spanned from the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos to the frontiers of our understanding of the universe. The first biography to offer deep insight into both Feynman's scientific achievements and his personal life, it is written by Jagdish Mehra. An accomplished physicist and historian of science in his own right, Mehra knew Feynman for thirty years, and their friendship deeply informs all aspects of the book. Feynman invited Mehra to spend three weeks with him shortly before his death in 1988, and after Feynman died, following a ten year battle against cancer, Mehra interviewed almost eighty of his friends and colleagues. They share their recollections of Feynman from his precocious childhood in Queens, New York, to his final days, painting an unforgettable portrait of a scientist who insisted throughout his life on taking the whole of nature as the arena of his science and his imagination. Mehra writes clearly and comprehensively about the theoretical and technical aspects of Feynman's achievements: his crucial role in the development of the atomic bomb; his association with Hans Bethe at Cornell, where he worked out his famous path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, and went on to develop the Feynman diagrams, so ubiquitous in quantum field theory, elementary particle physics, and statistical mechanics; and the full range and depth of his work from 1950 until shortly before his death at the California Institute of Technology.

Here, too, are intimate glimpses into the development of Feynman's inner life, including his devoted relationship with his extraordinary father, a self-taught uniform salesman, and his first marriage, to his boyhood sweetheart, Arline, whom he married knowing that she had only a short time to live. Feynman was an eyewitness to some of this century's key moments of scientific discovery, and Mehra devotes an entire chapter to Feynman's more philosophical reflections on the implications of these discoveries. Flamboyant and impatient, but dedicated to his vision of a better world through cooperation and the fearless pursuit of scientific truth, Feynman emerges here as a genius whom fellow Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger remembered as "an honest man; the outstanding intuitionist of our age and a prime example of what may lie in store for anyone who dares to follow the beat of a different drum." ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Complementary reading for Feynman "fans"
I have read quite a number of biographical books of Richard Feynman, and Jagdish Mehra has done a good job I reckon. I am myself a great enthusiast of Feynman's way od thinking about science and other things, and this book provides one with bits and pieces that I can't recall I found in any of the other biographies (Gribbins, Gleick). I am not familiar with Ralph Leighton's books about Feynman, but Mehra's book is definitely a great one, specially the first parts which describe richard's childhood, elementary and high school, and college days. It really tells the story of the making of an outstanding scientist. I recommend it to those interested in learning more about the life and specially the work, mainly in QED, of such a great icon in physics.

An awful compendium
The book is already out of print, which indicates a collective
wisdom of the technical readership. As others (e.g., "zero
stars") have pointed out, this is a carelessly compiled
assortment of facts. And it is too bad, because Feynman
deserves a fine technical biography. And there do exist
excellent books on Feynman's life and work. Gleick's "Genius"
is a masterful personal biography (Gleick is a fine writer
for the technically literate: e.g., see his "Chaos").
Schweber's "QED and the men who made it" is an excellent
historical presentation of QED, in which of course Feynman
plays a major role. But Mehra's book fails in all aspects.
In particular, the technical parts are disorganized and
full of errors. I gave up half way through the book
in disgust.

If you want to know about Feynman's life and personality, see
"Genius", along with Ralph Leighton's wonderful 2-volume
retelling of Feynman's stories and his "Tuva or Bust".
Also, see the 1990 memorial issue of Physics Today devoted to
his relationships with his colleagues. He was often
described as a "teacher's teacher." The 3 volume "Lectures"
demonstrate that well. Feynman's no-nonsense,
intuitive approach also comes out
in his monographs "Quantum Electrodynamics" and "Theory
of Fundamental Processes", which still give a fine
introduction to relativistic quantum mechanics.
But Feynman's technical work went well beyond
QED and the introduction of path integral methods. It was
so broad that few scientific biographers could have done
it justice. Pais didn't try. Schweber has covered Feynman's
early contributions well.

Great, but only for a certain audience
Jagdish Mehra is, to be sure, not one of the great literary stylists, and his notion of historical writing is to throw in every available fact and save evaluation and historical analysis for a later date. Fair enough, I say: his is not the final word on Feynman, nor does he think so. Feynman's contribution to Quantum Electrodynamics is the central problem for any real biographer, and here Mehra is on stronger grounds. By its very nature, the book is steeped in math, and you will need to be up on calculus and Fourier expansions, not to mention the basic points of QED to read it with profit. It is good, solid history of science, but hardly a page-flipper for reading on the beach this summer.

Very detailed bio of a great physicist
I read this book about Feynman with great interest and I found it better than Gleick's book. Some people might not like the amount of detailed info about all sorts of Feynman trivia but how can a true fan of his not be delighted with all this great stuff! The technical parts are very thorough and detailed; it was well beyond anything you find in "popular" books like Gleick's. In that sense this is not really for general readers but there is enough interesting stuff for the interested layman too. I highly recommend this very thoroughly researched masterpiece!

Surely you are joking !
I am writing in response to the "zero star"review from from an unidentifiable source in Redondo Beach ,Ca. and some seconding chimpanzee in Sydney,Australia. Firstly , you are not "a physicist too" ! You can't even understand the mathematical representation of Feynman's science .Dr. Mehra is a physicist who has intimate first hand knowledge of all aspects of the history of quantum theory. Mr Redondo is probably confusing "physicist" with "physical therapist". A word of advice to Redondoman : Learn the Science;learn the value of details;learn the English language and when you lecture at Oxford "too" then you "too" will appreciate the specificity of carefully researched and personally corroborated biography [quite unlike the James Gleick general, sophomoric,second hand effort]. Redondoman you and the Sydney Chimp are "too" AWFUL to dignify further discussion . Dr. Mehra has produced a prodigious quantity and profound quality of work. Read it ! ... Read more

Book Description

This winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in physics tells his astonishing life story, a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, eternal skepticism, and raging chutzpah. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Read this book: it's entertaining
If you have ever wondered how a dishonest, drunken, whoremongering, bar-room-brawling junkie can also be a Nobel-prize-winning physicist then this book will provide the answer.

At least Feynman was not boring. Considering how many physicists nowadays are, this is no small thing.

A Interesting Look into Mr. Feynman's Life and Physics
Surely, Your Joking Mr. Feynman is a comical and interesting book about Mr. Feynman's life and his passion Physics. In this book he talks very in-depthly about his life everything from his very early childhood years to his adult life as a professor. The book is very well written with just enough detail to make you interested in all of his adventures, but not too much that you would loose interest. This book does not use complex equations or terms to explain physics terms, but creatively words each concept so that any level of reader and physics explorer could understand what he was doing. Giving this book great word choice and a nice flow that keeps you wanting to read along. Through all of this, the book is comically written and tells about Mr. Feynman's crazy experiments and pranks he played on people. Everything from hiding a door from a member of his fraternity to casually moving around the information for the atomic bomb from safe to safe. Mr. Feynman thrives on crazy adventures through the physics world and does many crazy things along the way to satisfy his hunger for comedy. This book is recommended for anyone who enjoys a good educational book, but also has a good sense of humor and enjoys practical jokes themselves.

coolio book
this is one of the best books ever. being in Geometry and using the pythagorean theorem, deals A LOT with numbers being squared. with the neat little trick i learned in this book, i hardly ever use my calculator if the number is around 50 or any multiple of 50. it has saved a lot of my time and i am not kidding, Mr. Feynman is a genius. WOW!!! =)

Feynman on Audio CDs
I read Surely Your Joking for the 1st time in late 1987. My daughter got if for me at my request for my birthday. Actually I asked her for something by Phillip Morrison but while she was shopping in the San Jose State bookstore she forgot what physicist I was interested and got Feynman's book instead.

I'm glad she made that innocent mistake. Feynman knocked me out. Raymond Todd's reading on the 10 CD audio set is outstanding. I'm buying my daughter a set for herself.

Sometimes, Non-Linear Thinking Shines
Feynman's thinking style is not "linear." This is the reason he was able to break out of the box, and make the profound breakthroughs that were his mark. One anecdote after another illustrates this in a most enjoyable and enlightening way.

For example, as a lad he wanted to learn real mathematics. The librarian wouldn't allow him to borrow advanced math books, so he said they were for someone else, someone older. Reading book after book, he taught himself mathematics. He ended up learning some advanced math uniquely his way. Years later, while still in graduate school, he was recruited to work on the Manhattan project (which developed the atom bomb). When other mathematicians who used conventional math treatments were stumped, Feynman was able to make breakthrough using a math style unique to him-non-linear.

And, by the way, quantum mechanics is not linear, either. This was one of the most enjoyable reads ever. ... Read more

Book Description

The day Richard Feynman died, students at the California Institute of Technology hung a banner across the face of its library that read, simply, "We love you, Dick." To students of physics all over the world, Feynman was living proof that to lead a life in science you do not need ice water for blood and the mind of a Cray computer. This was a man who combined practical joking, safe-cracking, and bongo-playing with superlative teaching and brilliant insights.Although everyone knows that Feynman was a great scientist, few people could tell you even the name of the work for which he is acknowledged. The name of Hawking is associated with black holes, Darwin with evolution, Einstein with relativity. But Feynman? He was just a "scientist," which is ironic since his greatest work was actually in the area of quantum electrodynamics, a subject of enormous fascination to non-scientists today.Arguably the greatest physicist of his generation--and undoubtedly one of the most eccentric--Feynman's contributions are well illustrated in Richard Feynman: A Life in Science, and readers are sure to grasp his remarkable contribution to scientific understanding through the book's friendly and accessible style.
The biographical format offers an excellent way for non specialist readers to explore one of the more complex worlds of science.
Richard Feynman's own collection of essays Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman was a national bestseller.
... Read more

Reviews (9)

A thoroughly enjoyable introduction to Feynman
I can't remember ever reading a biography quite as enjoyable. The authors are to be congratulated for their perfect blend of scientific and personal anecdotes. You won't find any of Feynman's lectures here, but you will come to understand why Feynman is so revered. The author's write, "Does the world really need another book about Richard Feynman? We think so, or we wouldn't have written it." I agree with them, and I'm sure you will too. A wonderful book.

An excellent, balanced biography of Richard Feynman
ÒRichard Feynman--A Life in ScienceÓ is a welcome addition, another view from yet another aspect. Other biographers have stressed different sides of Richard Feynman--magician, joker, non-conforming oddball, but this one is true to its subtitle, focusing on Feynman the scientist. For that was what Feynman was, first and foremost--incredibly inventive, irreverent and unconventional, yes, but underlying it all, an inquiring mind, a physicist of the very best. If you have more than a nodding acquaintance with science, and want to know what made such an extraordinary person tick (not that weÕll ever know it all), this is the one to read.

Well worth reading
Richard Feynman was clearly a giant among giants. He was also the most human of beings. Quantum electrodynamics and related topics can be among the most esoteric of any. Writing a book that adequately portrays such a variety of topics can be a forbidding task. This book meets the challenge admirably. While much if not most of the material can be found elsewhere, the clarity of the descriptions and explanations of the technical topics is excellent. Well worth reading.

an amateurish biography rehashing old topics
I love anything Feynman, like a great many people out there, but I found this book to be depressingly amateurish. The authors are overly infatuated with their subject and seem intent on breathlessly convincing us how wonderful Feynman was, as if we couldn't figure it out for ourselves.

To me, the most annoying feature of the book was the endless direct quotes from other Feynman books. Just what service is this book providing?

I wouldn't be so harsh if it weren't for the fact that Glieck's "Genius" has already covered all of the topics presented here, and with much more clarity and detail. I have trouble justifying why another biography was necessary. Without "Genius," this book would probably be more palatable.

The great thing that "Genius" did that this book never attempts, is to make Feynman human. Yes he was brilliant, yes he was funny, yes he was an incredible teacher. But he had a dark side as well, and "Genius" explores that without flinching.

In the end, I'd recommend passing this one up and getting "Genius".

Problematic but readable

(...Part Two:)

This brings us to the Gribbin's rationale for writing yet "another book about Richard Feynman." Thing is, Feynman had one whale of a good time doing physics. He did it because it was fun, and when it wasn't fun, he didn't do it, instead dabbling in fields as diverse as biology, computing and bongo drumming. He was also, hands down, the finest teacher of physics who ever lived. As a first-year physics undergraduate myself, my sharpest memory before I left that field was of sitting alone in dreary, windowless room on the second floor of the physics building and popping in a videocassette of something called The Feynman Lectures. I slumped down in the chair, prepared to be bored into madness, doing this only because a good friend asked me to.

When the tape ended about an hour later, I blinked as I came out of a trance and finally brought my jaw back up, and realized that I had been in the presence of greatness. It was a performance, not a lesson, an exposition of physical principles delivered by a guy so nutso in love with the topic that oftentimes his voice choked with barely-repressed laughter. He had a clarity of style so compelling you couldn't resist absorbing the knowledge if you tried. The Lectures have since become classics, along with written compilations of other talks that have gone on to become best-selling books.

The Gribbins set themselves the task of bringing out these other sides of Richard Feynman, and in that sense they succeed only barely. First, there is really nothing new in this book that hasn't been dealt with elsewhere, and better, most notably by James Gleick in his book, Genius.

Second, while a great of simplification is absolutely necessary to convey some sense of the topic without overwhelming the novice, there are many statements in this book that are unnecessarily absolute, definitive and downright misleading. Telling us that QED explains "everything there is to explain about interactions involving electrons and photons [and] everything there is to explain about weak interactions" is inappropriate, giving us the impression that, on the day QED was published, all research in this area came to a screeching halt.

Third, and perhaps most unforgivably, you quickly come to realize that this book is less a careful examination of a man's life and work than it is a fawning, sycophantic adoration that attempts to elevate a mere mortal into the status of near-deity. This completely non-critical worship (of a man neither of the Gribbins ever met) becomes wearing and tedious after a while, especially when the authors provide testimonials from other notable scientists that add nothing of substance to the idolization, but seem to be some kind of attempt to externally validate their opinions, as though they themselves may have realized they were overdoing it and brought in evidence to prove to us they weren't kidding.

And just when we think we've had about enough of that, they crank it up another notch, this time in the form of a competition to see who among the elites of physics was the very best, starting on page 189. We learn that Feynman made more major contributions in a greater number of decades than any other physicist, including Einstein. We learn that, had the Nobel committee had their heads screwed on correctly, Feynman would rightfully have won three prizes, not just one. And just in case the clearly superior box score is still not evident, we learn that Murray Gell-Mann, the brilliant Nobelist who shared a secretary with Feynman at Caltech, was really a somewhat nasty sonofagun who was more interested in looking smart than being smart and, if you read between the lines, probably didn't really deserve his own Nobel prize.

Well, then: why do I think you should read this book? Because I feel that anything that has an outside chance of getting nonscientists to think about the quantum world is worth pursuing.

When I was in elementary school, we had a series of about a hundred biographies of well-known Americans: Knute Rockne, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Glenn Cunningham, etc. Geared for kids, these books were breezy, easy editions that read more like public relations releases than serious studies of people's lives. But we read them and, in many cases, they stuck with us when we got older and spurred us on to read more serious works about these people.

Richard Feynman - A Life in Science reads a lot like those books. I've read nearly all of John Gribbin's books on physics and he is the John Grisham of the field, coincidence of name notwithstanding. The best way for the amateur to come to the physics is through the people who made the physics, and the Gribbins do a reasonably good job of interweaving the two. There is a great deal of oversimplification of the science, but the fact is that there is no other way to do it and keep the difficult mathematics out of it. So, in the sense of introducing you to an extraordinary character (when Feynman got bored during his work on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II, he cracked top-security safes just for laughs), and extraordinary science, the book has merit, and won't tax your brain too much.

However, if you're willing to tax your brain just a wee bit more, here's a much better idea: Read Genius by James Gleick, and In Search of Schroedinger's Cat by John Gribbin. The former is the best yet look at Feynman's work and life, and the latter may be the best single-book introduction to quantum physics for "the average Joe" you're likely to come across. My criticism of A Life in Science aside, perhaps only Isaac Asimov rivals Gribbin in his ability to translate the most arcane of scientific theories into breezy readabilty for popular consumption.

... Read more

Book Description

Richard Feynman was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century - from his work on the atomic bomb to his solution to the puzzle of the Challenger disaster; Feynman helped to shape the world as we know it. Nobel laureate, iconoclastic icon, caring family man, amateur artist and professional musician, Feynman was a man of many dimensions, and this book is a magnificent treasury of his best short works.A wide-ranging collection, it presents an intimate and fascinating view of a life in science - a life like no other. There could be no better way to capture the spirit of the times than in the words of one whom Time has honored as one of the most influential people of the twentieth century.

"More gems from the Feynman factory.If some things are old or borrowed, it hardly matters: there are enough new or unfamiliar to charm fans." (Kirkus Reviews) ... Read more

Reviews (37)

Brilliance and charm: Feynman as a teacher
I very much enjoyed this entertaining and delightful collection of lectures, talks and essays by the world-renown and sorely missed Professor Feynman, Nobel Prize winning physicist, idiosyncratic genius and one of the great men of the twentieth century.

I particularly enjoyed the subtle yet unmistakable way he scolded the people at NASA for putting their political butts before the safety of the space program they were managing in his famous "Minority Report to the Space Shuttle Challenger Inquiry." But the chapter that really sold me on Richard P. Feynman, boy wonder grown up, was "It's as Simple as One, Two, Three" in which he explores the ability to do two things at once through an experiment with counting. Such a delight he took in learning as a kid from his friend Bernie that we sometimes think in pictures and not in words. And then the further delight he took in learning that some people count with their inner voice (himself), and others (his friend John Tukey) count by visualization.

I was also loved the chapter, "What is Science?", a talk to science teachers in which Feynman demonstrates that the real difference between science and other ways of "knowing" (e.g., religion) is the ability to doubt. In science we learn, as Feyman said he himself learned, to live with doubt. But in the religious way of "knowing" doubt is intolerable. Feynman gives an evolutionary illustration of why doubt is essential. He begins with the "intelligent" animals "which can learn something from experience (like cats)." At this stage, he says, each animal learned "from its own experience." Then came some animals that could learn more rapidly and from the experience of others by watching. Then came something "completely new...things could be learned by one animal, passed on to another, and another, fast enough that...[the knowledge] was not lost to the race...," and could be passed on to a new generation.

Now, let's stop for a moment. What a great teacher does--and here and elsewhere Feynman proves himself to be a great teacher (although he said he doubted that!)--is to guide the student just enough so that the student arrives at or anticipates the point of the lesson before the teacher gets there. What is the punch line of this lesson for the science teachers? Namely this: with the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next it became also possible to pass on false knowledge or "mistaken ideas." Feynman calls this a "disease."

"Then a way of avoiding the disease was discovered. This is to doubt that what is being passed from the past is in fact true, and to try to find out ab initio, again from experience, what the situation is, rather than trusting the experience of the past..."

In other words, don't blindly accept the word of authority. Test it for yourself! And this is what science does. It tests and it tests again, and it doubts and it doubts--always.

I loved this because one of my dictums is "always guide the experts"--the lawyer, the doctor, the insurance adjustor, et al. Always guide them because, although they are the experts, you're the one who really cares. To this I can now add that you should also doubt the experts because even though they are experts they can be wrong. And, as Feynman showed in his report on the Challenge disaster, they can be wrong for reasons that have nothing to do with their expertise.

I also liked the commencement address he gave at Caltech on "Cargo Cult Science...and How to Not Fool Yourself." We fool ourselves a lot. The managers at NASA fooled themselves; what's their names of cold fusion delusion fame fooled themselves. Feynman has noted that he has fooled himself. Science, he avers, is a tool to help us to not fool ourselves. He is profoundly right. Without science we would go on fooling ourselves with all sorts of mumbo-jumbo, "revealed" religiosity and scientific-seeming stuff such as Rhine's ESP experiments some years ago at Duke, the entire litany of New Age pseudobabblese, and--yes!--such stuff as the amazing Cargo Cult Science in which some Pacific Islanders, in an attempt to attract the big birds of the sky with their cargoes of goodies, built "nests," that is, landing fields with empty cargo boxes, and faux towers, etc. in the hope that the planes flying overhead would see them and land on their island. Feynman has taken this as an example of pseudoscience, that is, behavior in the form of science without the substance of science, without the "integrity" of science.

The integrity of science, Feynman advised the graduates, demands that all the information about the experiment be given, even detrimental facts. Feynman contrasts this idea with that of advertizing in which only that which makes the product look good is given.

When reading this book it helps to imagine that one is listening to Feynman speak. The text includes repetitions and the omissions which he no doubt conveyed with his voice, expression or gesture. When one reads him this way, some of Feynman's endearing charm and the gentle, self-effacing humor for which he is famous comes through. Here's a joke from pages 206-207: He is at Esalen in a hot bath with another man and a girl. The man begins to massage the girl's foot. He feels something in her big toe. He asks his instructor, "Is that the pituitary?" The girl says, "No, that's not the way it feels." Feynman injects, "You're a hell of a long way from the pituitary, man." And they both look at him. "I had blown my cover, you see--and she said, It's reflexology. So I closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating." Yes, Feynman is a long way from reflexology.

Find out
Anyone who became familiar with Richard Feynman from his hugely popular memoirs What Do You Care What Other People Think, and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman will find The Pleasure of Finding Things Out an intermediate step between those books and the dense scientific texts behind his Nobel Prize and reputation as one of the 20th century's great minds.

This book is not meant to be entertaining, but I suppose a glimpse into Mr. Feynman's mind cannot help but be entertaining, even when it is a series of lectures based entirely on science. Here he talks about what he calls the "thrill" of boldly finding out what no man knew before, on subjects ranging from the discovery of the reasons behind the crash of the space shuttle Challenger to the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos and from the role of science in society to his Nobel acceptance speech. And while it is not specifically written with the non-scientist in mind, a strong background in science is not necessary to understand and enjoy the wind-ranging collection of philosophies, musings, and remarks collected on these pages.

scraping the bottom of the feynmaniana barrel
This book is yet another posthumous compilation of Feynman's musings. With each successive book - starting from the wonderful transcriptions of Leighton, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman - they have been declining in quality for years. Well, this is a hodgepodge of paper scraps and even raw oral interviews that have been thrown together to exploit just about the last drop of these kinds of things, and I can say that I don't think the process should continue.

There are some amusing things in this book and some interesting details, but there really isn't anything special except for the fact that Feynman enjoys the personality cult associated with a zany physics genius. He was an original character and, in physics, a truly great thinker. But that doesn't make every last little thing that he ever said or scribbled down interesting, except to uncritical devotees who live with the fantasy that everything he said was better than worthwhile. Indeed, if you know about something in great depth he writes (well talks) about, his views appear as superficial as the rest of non-specialists on the subjects. Where he is truly interesting in on physics, mathematics, and science - and the overwhelming majority of what he produced on those subjects is already available.

I would not recommend this book, except as a source of Feynman trivia if that is your bag. Indeed, I had heard most of these things before - either in films about the man or from his earlier writings. As such, that makes this book the crassest attempt to commercially exploit the legacy of this great man yet again. If such a thing were possible, the editor should be ashamed.

different but in a way too different
I found this book to be complicating as it jumped from subject to subject. It wasnt really that informative. It gave out the authors personal information and feelings rather than actual facts. I guess it was something that one with the same mind frame as him could relate to. I had to read this book for school. I got nothing out of it, except the ignorant and close minded thoughts of the author. The grammar was also terrribe. It wasnt written in a way that one could follow. I had to use my imagination to kind of figure out the authors feelings of whatever he was talking. It was written in a way as if he was actually talking to in person rather than through a book. But I do have to say that it was different. I guess if you are into and study science it is the book for you. But its not really a book to learn from. Instead its more like a book to say "Oh! I feel that way too." To conclude, I dont know what to say to those of you who are into science, but to those of you who do not have much of an interest in it i would reccomend that you choose another book.

A grab-bag of a book.
This book is a hodge-podge of personal and professional reminiscenses and interviews. Feynmann tells stories about building the A-bomb, his Dad, teaching his children, curiosity, learning, "the big picture," and how he learned that different minds work differently. I enjoyed parts of the book, particularly the parts most related to the book's title, like how his Father taught him scientific curiosity.

It is obvious that a lot of people have respect for Feynman, and I don't doubt he earned it. But as a story-teller, while he is sometimes interesting, frankly a lot of the time he is rather incoherent. The interviews are especially inarticulate, fumbling for words. I guess you had to be there. Elsewhere, Feynman comes across as another famous scientist piddling in other fields in his spare time. As an educator he is interesting, though not always fully syntactical. What he teaches well is his own infectious enthusiasm for "finding things out." Like some other scientists who are not very familiar with other fields, he tends to depict that pleasure as an almost exclusively scientific one. But of course Confucius, Origen, and Augustine knew the same pleasure, as do we in the contemporary humanities. As a teacher myself, I agree that enthusiastic curiosity is itself the greatest lesson. Feynman communicates that well, among other things.

Feynman admits that "in a field that is so complicated that true science is not able to get anywhere, we have to rely on a kind of old-fashioned wisdom." It would be truer to say that science is one in a continuum of epistomological methods, from the most direct (and limited), like math, to "hard sciences" like physics and chemistry, to "soft sciences" (paleontology) and up through history to psychology and finally theology. Like many scientists, and antagonistic philosophers (Rorty), Feynman confuses epistomological "hardness" with rationality, in the sense of finding out what truly is, and being reasonably certain about it.

The odd thing about Feynman's excursions into other fields is that he admits, "I'm still a very one-sided person and don't know a great deal." His editors think he's just being modest, I guess.

Most of the time Feynman treats religion with formal respect (one gets the feeling he's been scolded before and doesn't want to pour oil on the fire). He is, in fact, rather ignorant on the subject, refuting silly heresies, and thinking he has got to the heart of the matter. At one point he compares the "Catholic religion in the Middle Ages" to Hitler and Stalin. I'm not Catholic, but in my opinion that reflects poorly on his understanding of the historical roots of science and democracy. For all Feynman's love of science, it's a pity he should be ignorant of where it came from.

That such a grab-bag of a book would inspire the loyalty that is revealed in reviews below, is something I have great sympathy for. But it also demonstrates what many observers have commented on, the priest-like status that scientists have attained in Western culture. Books like this make me mourn for the sins of modern thought: over-specialization, the cults of celebrity and science, and philosophical confusion about how we know things. The book did make me think about how to teach, however, and introduced me to an interesting scientist.

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man ... Read more