2023-09-26 Just finished the Blackstone 1997 audiobook version. Absolutely wonderful. My opinion of Feynman and this book is even higher now than before. The book is so timely/timeless, fun, funny and profound, I am astounded. The ending chapter "Cargo Cult Science" is a tour de force of crucial insights. Perhaps even more important today than when it was first published in the 1985. The theme is integrity, especially in science, his field. And the final lines are a plea to keep one's integrity and to search out places, people and institutions that promote the freedom to practice integrity. Isn't that possibly the most important problem we face today?

2023-09-14 After picking this as a book for my dad to listen to on his new Audible acct with the great Shokz bone conducting hearing device and his love of the book, I decided to try it again myself. Listened yesterday to a good chunk of the audio version of this book. Wow! SOOOOOOO good to return to it. It is simply a joy. The creativity, the joie de vivre, the logic, the humor, the passion for science, the passion for fun and solving problems, playing with language, making practical jokes, the disdain for pretense, etc. etc. and his ability to pass those qualities and others on to the reader/listener is just fantastic. So looking forward to continuing the listen... and moving on to his other autobiographical sketches book, "What do you care what they think Mr. Feynman?"

17 Nov. 2017 - I read this about 30-35 years ago and loved it. It was given to me by a scientist friend who said I would like it. I had heard a little about Richard Feynman's reputation as an amazing physicist and was kind of taken aback by the title.

But the book was a pure joy to experience. I have some very vivid memories about his humor and positive views of life and living. He was fantastic at demonstrating clearly that anyone can think through some perceived difficult problems, if they just use the basics and don't give up. His vivid examples of repairing radios, safecracking and diagnosing his wife's ailment (to the consternation of her doctors) [note: I think this example is from the other book, since I did not hear it in this one] struck home to me in a very powerful way.

I recommend this book, and it's later companion (with another funky but pointed title): "What Do You Care What they Think, Mr. Feynman?" to everyone, especially young people, who need a boost in reasoned self-confidence.

Thank you Ross Overbeek, for investing in me with this book. I am eternally grateful.

This book's been recommended to me by my boyfriend and after giving it a 5-page trial, I got sucked right into it!

I partially read it, partially listened to the audiobook (which was, imho, done really well and was so pleasant to listen to while doing puzzle or gaming or whatnot).

I loved the very beginning, his childhood, where he was so curious and so sweet about his early discoveries. The rest of his science-related work as well as hobbies (drumming, painting, lock-picking, math duels, pranks, school book selection and more) can be preeety much summarized to..well, this picture:



Feynman was definitely no bore. I love his way of everyday thinking: so practical, stripped of any tedious theorizing and philosophical blabber. Like in that part where he visits the biology department and find out that all the students memorize so many facts by heart when they could just look it up quickly. So I went to the librarian in the biology section and asked her if she could find me a map of the cat. "A map of the cat, sir?" she asked, horrified. "You mean a zoological chart!" From then on there were rumors about some dumb biology graduate student who was looking for a "map of the cat."
When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles. The other students in the class interrupt me: "We know all that!" "Oh," I say, "you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes."

It's a really interesting, easy read - I really enjoyed this one, both in written and in audio form.

And my most favourite part:
When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. [...]First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words "essential object" in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but that I didn't understand.
After some discussion as to what "essential object" meant, the professor leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things and drew something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard. "Mr. Feynman," he said, "would you say an electron is an 'essential object'?"
Well, not I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so I had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to watch. "But," I said, "I'll try to answer the professor's question if you will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea of what 'essential object' means. Is a brick an essential object? [...]
Then the answers came out. One man stood up and said, "A brick as an individual, specific brick. THAT is what Whitehead means by an essential object." Another man said "No, it isn't the individual brick that is an essential object; it's the general character that all bricks have in common - their 'brickness' - that is the essential object."
Another guy got up and said, "No, it's not in the bricks themselves. 'Essential object' means the idea in the mind that you get when you think of bricks." Another guy got up, and another, and I tell you I have never heard such ingenious different ways of looking at a brick before.

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Now, did I mention the book gets hilarious at moments? :D Feynman was in Kyoto, trying to learn Japanese. So his lesson go like: One day he was teaching me the word for "see." "All right," he said, "You want to say, 'May I see your garden?' What do you say?"
I made up a sentence with the word that I just learned. "No, no!" he said. "When you say to someone, "Would you like to see my garden? you use the first 'see.' But when you want to see someone else's garden, you must use another 'see,' which is more polite."
"Would you like to glance at my lousy garden?" is essentially what you're saying in the first case, but when you want to look at the other fella's garden, you have to say something like, "May I observe your gorgeous garden?" So there's two different words you have to use.
Then he gave me another one: "You go to a temple, and you want to look at the gardens..." I made up a sentence, this time with the polite "see."
"No, no!" he said. "In the temple, the gardens are much more elegant. So you have to say something that would be equivalent to 'May I hang my eyes on your most exquisite gardens?'"


*sigh* :'D

I won't go into discussion of Feynman as a person outside of the science world. All I can conclude is that intelligence and morale do not have to coincide. Instead, I'll just troll the science a bit below :D brace yourself!

This is the manual of curiosity and intelligence by the great physicist -- Richard Feynman. An incredible life of one of the prodigious thinkers is summarized in less than 400 pages. I would not have put it down even if the book was 4000 pages long, so interesting is the story, a real page-turner.

Apparently, by not taking life so seriously Dr. Feynman achieved some remarkably serious things which led to Nobel prize, and other remarkable accomplishments. How many other Nobel prize laureates have safe cracking as a hobby? The book is not just an entertaining story about an extraordinary life. The reader will find some invaluable wisdom about the essence of science, curiosity, creativity, teaching, science ethics, and life morals.

I knew, believed, and always felt that curiosity is an essential ingredient of a purposeful life. Feynman, by his life, proved the point. For everybody seeking inspiration and curious about one of the most curious, and where it all might lead, this is a charming book which will probably be a jump-start to other Feynman’s books.

It seems only natural to begin my thoughts on this book with a quote from Feynman :

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself. And you are the easiest person to fool.

These words capture the essence of what formed Feynman's portrait. Someone who questioned all the established notions and believed in science to be ultimately a trial and error method to arrive at the truth. His is a first rate scientific mind that never stops at anything unless he arrives at a conclusion that is satisfying and in accordance with common sense. What makes him different is the fact that he does not stop here but goes one step further to ensure that he does communicate this in the most simplest fashion possible. It is a book long glimpse to the mind of a funny, intelligent and humane persona that made up Richard Feynman.

What strikes you most about him is his utter lack of pretension. For a man who won a Nobel, worked on the Manhattan project and has a string of achievements in the field of physics to his credit, he is entirely unassuming. He assumes the same air of fun and gaiety in discussing the Manhattan project as he does on how to flirt with the showgirls in Vegas. This is a no holds barred account of his life and a detailed elucidation on some of his thoughts and perspectives. If I was asked to pick what stood out of this book, I would pick the attribute of curiosity. You do not need a sharp mind to pick out the number of times he tinkers around to find the underlying truths all because it got him curious.

The second aspect is that he never shied away from learning all through his life. From what I can recollect right now, he went along and studied how to make music at a Brazilian Carnival, how to gamble like a high roller, how to play bongo drums, how to be interesting to women without emptying your pocket in the process and so on. If you look at these things he learned, they have nothing to do with science but that never stopped him. All that mattered to him was the learning and how to be good at what you learn. It baffled me to see that he could manage to learn so much in one single lifetime. Feynman was never the highbrow kind to spurn all these as beneath him but he embraced all these as the little things that make our World fun to live in.

Feynman was above everything else an epitome of irreverence. Social niceties never sat well with him and he was the kind to call a spade its real name, in the loudest way possible no matter what the occasion was . Bureaucracy was what suffered his wrath the most through pranks and vociferous protests. Here is what he had to say about the ruling elite and its policies : I know it is the way the Government works ; well screw the Government ! I feel that human beings should treat human beings like human beings. And unless I am treated like one, I'm not going to have anything to do with them.

These acts of rebelliousness chose to make him a kind of social pariah, but Feynman being Feynman cared not two hoots about it !

This is no biography but an exploration of things that caught his interest from everything ranging from Mayan hieroglyphics and quarks to hallucinations and good looking girls. A very interesting set of anecdotes about a rather unique human being. Recommended.

Che la forza sia con te

Richard Feynman è un fisico, premio Nobel nel 1965. Un uomo indubbiamente intelligente, curioso, entusiasta del mondo della tecnica e della scienza.

In questo libro racconta tramite aneddoti la sua vita, fatta di studi importanti (uno per tutti la partecipazione allo sviluppo della bomba atomica a Los Alamos) ma anche di episodi curiosi o apparentemente insignificanti.

Purtroppo non è sufficiente essere intelligenti per scrivere bene. Non basta essere curiosi per incuriosire. Credersi amabili non ci rende simpatici per forza. E non è detto che parlare di fisica in modo “facile” significhi divulgare e interessare.

Forse Feynman parla troppo di sé, o semplicemente di quanto è tanto bravo e intelligente. Fatto sta che ho faticato (molto) a terminarlo (e tantissimo a sopportarlo).

জীবনটা কিভাবে বাচা উচিত আর পৃথিবীটাকে কিভাবে দেখা উচিত শিখলাম। মাঝে বেশ কয়েকবার হাসতে হাসতে গড়াগড়ি খেলাম, ফাইনম‍্যান লোকটা কোন পর্যায়ের ফাজিল ছিল শুধু সেটা জানতে হলেও বইটা পড়া দরকার। আমার পড়া সেরা বইগুলোর মধ‍্যে একদম প্রথমদিকে থাকবে এটা।

The Nobel prize winning physicist, acclaimed drummer, artist, expert on Mayan astronomy, safecracker, prankster, etc, etc, tells “crazy adventures” of his life. They’re really not “crazy adventures,” these anecdotes; my own father's are easily just as rich and bizarre. Feynman came off to me as a somewhat unpleasant character: he was full to the brim of himself; his false modesty (“I’m too dim to realize when to keep my mouth shut, I just say what I think”) was cloying and annoying, as were his amazement at anyone else’s talent (a professional drummer is far better than him at the drums; this “shocks” him), his claims to understand nature better than artists, and his thinly-veiled put-downs of anyone even remotely concerned with the abstract. He was just the kind of jerk who, caught up in his criticism of others’ inability to grasp his broad points, never begins to wonder whether he is the one missing the gist. Also, his anecdotes are not fleshed out with context: who exactly are the people he’s talking to? When was this? I don’t care. In all, funny and interesting at times (at Los Alamos, on a committee to select school text books), but mainly kind of mundane.

I totally agree with Emily, the top reviewer with 113 comments, most of them chastising her for not loving this book, and many of them trying to imply she's simply not smart enough to appreciate Feynman if she doesn't love it. Without attempting to demean or diminish Feynman's actual brilliance and greatness as a scientist, I declare: this book is annoying as shit. Without dismissing the many very real talents Mr. Feynman had, I'm not convinced that compelling and empathetic writing was one of them. I'm aware this book is little more than a compilation of interviews with Feynman, so perhaps the blame there lies with his co-author/editor, who took Feynman too much at his literal word and failed to effectively work the many anecdotes into a pleasing and well-written whole.

I'm told Feynman was a very likeable guy, but the guy who comes across in these anecdotes seems to me to be only likeable in small doses. He seems bombastic, overbearing, even a bit grandiose in his manner, despite paying lip service to modesty – and by this, I don't just mean he spends too much time bragging about how clever he is, which he also does. Don't bother dinging me for saying this by pointing out that he IS pretty goddamn clever and has earned some bragging rights - I'm aware of that, and I don't care. He could be the smartest person in the history of the world, but braggadocio is still not an attractive habit. And don't try to tell me it's an essential quality of an autobiography, either. I've read other autobiographies where people spend upward of 300 pages talking about themselves without making me want to punt them.

No, I sense something deeper in Feynman's manner of speaking that says to me, This person is utterly arrogant and yes, self-aggrandizing. (Emily's word.) It strikes me as the sound of someone who's spent too much of his life with his fanboys hanging on his every word, so that now he thinks every word that comes out of his mouth is actually worth hanging on. This may be a justifiable mistake for someone in Feynman's position, but that doesn't make it any less a mistake. In fact, I think it's a mistake that is at the heart of this book – the concept of, “It's Feynman, so of COURSE we can just compile a bunch of interviews with him about random shit he did one time, put them in chronological order, and it'll be great!”

And I don't find Feynman nearly as funny, endearing, or even interesting as he thinks he is. To be fair, I admit he seems from afar like a terribly interesting man, but I quickly discovered I do NOT want to spend 11 solid hours listening to him tell seemingly random and generally trivial stories about episodes in his life. One or two anecdotes may be mildly entertaining, but his style gets old in a hurry, and his sense of humor seems downright mean-spirited at times.

Perhaps my mistake was in attempting to vread it straight through – I don't really have any other way to vread. But you can only vread so many anecdotes about experimenting with ants and their pheromone trails or working on broken radios as a kid before you realize each one may be slightly interesting, but when you put them all together in a row, their total interest value doesn't accumulate. Meanwhile, Feynman's annoyance value DOES. Therefore, I recommend this book (a) in small doses, say for example as light bedtime reading, or (b) for those on the “Feynman can do no wrong” bandwagon. This latter group is his true audience – the ones who are delighted to hang on every word that comes out of his mouth. And I suspect that in the latter half of his life, he moved through a world so surrounded by those people that he forgot there was anything else.

I could be wrong – maybe it's not Feynman's fault at all, and this isn't really him. This could be just the aspect of him that's been asked to sit down in front of a microphone and tell every story about himself that he can think of. When your friends tell you that your war stories are so awesome they should be compiled and published as a book, is there any other way it can really come out?

Audio notes: The audio version is not helped by a narrator who seems to be sort of channeling Feynman's manner of speaking – his rhythms and intonations, though not his accent or timbre – and it makes a slightly annoying series of anecdotes that much MORE annoying and somewhat duller than the material itself would warrant. I pulled up recordings of Feynman's lectures and more casual interviews, and there's enough of a match to his casual speech patterns that I think it's intentional. But it's as though the narrator learned to imitate Feynman by listening to him speak a single sentence, and then he just repeats that sentence over and over. Every sentence has the exact same rhythm and intonation as the one before it, and it's all a little too fast and perky, so it's like being forced to spend 11 hours listening to a salesman's patter. Somewhere between that and Chinese water torture.

Richard Feynman u ovoj knjizi ne piše o kvantnoj elektrodinamici, polju u kojemu je dao najveći doprinos fizici. Ovo su, kako i sam podnaslov kaže Adventures of a Curious Character, avanture znatiželjnog/neobičnog lika.

Feynman ovdje piše o nekim njemu najzanimljivijim događajima iz života koji su zabavni za ispričati. O tome kako se, već kao mali, počeo interesirati kako stvari funkcioniraju. Počeo je s rastavljanjem jednog radio prijemnika, a uskoro postao majstor za njih za cijelo susjedstvo. Feynman je sudjelovao i u razvoju atomske bombe, dok je istovremeno pokušavao provaliti u sef jednog od vojnih zapovjednika - ne zato da bi nešto ukrao iz sefa, nego samo zato, jer su mu rekli da je taj sef nemoguće obiti. Taj dio je i jedan od najzanimljivijih u knjizi. Samo od toga bi se mogla napraviti dobra komedija.

Mnoge stvari su ga zanimale, pa čak i kako mravi komuniciraju i kako znaju pravi put do hrane i da li se može istovremeno govoriti i brojati u sebi. Feynman je svirao i bongo bubnjeve. Bavio se i slikarstvom. I uz sve to dobio Nobelovu nagradu za fiziku.

Knjiga je stvarno užitak za čitanje, ima puno zanimljivih situacija i humora. Nevjerovatno je da je to sve jedan čovjek uspio proživjeti! Rijetko je koji fizičar-teoretičar imao tako uzbudljiv život.

Feynman također piše otvoreno i iskreno, pa se, uz zabavu, može saznati i nešto o samom čovjeku, njegovom karakteru, pa i o njegovim manama. Nakon čitanja knjige čini mi se da sam barem malo i upoznao samog Richarda Feynmana. Barem onako, iz viđenja.

Brilliant, inspirational and very funny!

There can be no argument that Richard P Feynman was a genius. He has been a hero of mine since I was very young, probably because my father also greatly admires him and spoke to me about Feynman and his unique personality from time to time.

There are some great stories in this book and they will make you laugh out loud. Feynman was always so full of life and he was curious about absolutely everything from a very early age. He would always want to know, "How does that work?" or "Why is that the way it is?" or "Is there another way to do that?" He would also latch onto something and decide that he wanted to do it, and to do it really well. For example, witnessing the bongo-playing in Brazil inspired him to learn to play like that and not like some studio-taught purist. He achieved it through dedication to his objective and sheer passion.

What made Feynman a genius? Well, there were lots of factors that contributed to his status, many of them discussed in other reviews of this book, but, my reason for putting him into that classification was that he was capable of explaining the most complex of matters to a five-year-old. That is TRUE genius.

I have read this book many times. It is a short book and will remain amongst my collection until the day that I die. If you haven't read it already, you should. You really need to read this book. I can guarantee that it will change at least one aspect of your life!

Before I read this engaging memoir, I knew him as Richard Phillips Feynman, one of the greatest physicists that ever lived.
Henceforth, this name will evoke images of a prankster, a musician, a safe cracker, a biologist, a Brazilian band member, an artist who visited several brothels to sell his painting and a man who refused to grow old.
These anecdotes from his life are sure to tickle your funny bone.

A while back, I read another book by Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, and I wasn't all that thrilled with it. It was kind of disappointing at the time. I knew that Feynman's fame came not only from his scientific brilliance, but from the fact that he was a genuinely interesting, funny and mischievous person. I had hoped that I could find some of that in the book, but to no avail. And so I gave it away so that someone else could get the pleasure from it that I could not.

Still, I was not completely turned off Feynman. There are videos of him around the internet that really show his vibrancy, his energy and the passion with which he approached the world, and I knew there would come a time when I would have to give him a second chance. Thus, this book.

Surely You're Joking, Mister Feynman! is the story - or rather a collection of stories - about what can happen to a person with immense confidence in his own abilities, an insatiable curiosity about the world, a willingness to make mistakes, all topped off with a generous helping of genius.

First, as Feynman calls them at the beginning of the book, some vitals.

Richard Feynman was a theoretical physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, taught at Caltech, and won the Nobel Prize in physics for his contributions to quantum electrodynamics. He was also one hell of a bongo player, an accomplished artist, and a self-taught safecracker. He was a joker and a prankster and a ladies' man who could bluff his way into pretty much anything he wanted to do, and was often surprised that people believed his bravado. He had a passion for mysteries and puzzles and figuring out how things worked, from combination locks to the movements of electrons to why water curves the way it does when it comes out the tap, and he didn't give a good goddamn about what the rest of the world thought of him.

In other words, Richard Feynman was a pretty awesome guy.

This book is a collection of Feynman's stories, the kind that he might tell at a party or with a bunch of friends traveling. They're the variety of story that might begin with, "Did I ever tell you how I joined a samba band in Rio?" and just go on from there. He starts with his youth, how he was the kind of boy who just loved to tinker with things. He would take electronics apart and put them back together, and then go to junk shops to buy parts that he could build into better radios. He did experiments with ants to find out how they communicated, and dedicated himself so hard to solving puzzles that eventually all he needed was the first line, and he could immediately come back with, "He starts by chopping every other one in three parts."

He was one of those kids whose curiosity was boundless, and who never even imagined that there was anything "better" he could have been doing than exploring how the world worked. I couldn't shake the feeling that if young Feynman were around today, he'd be medicated to the eyeballs just to stop him being so "weird." But you know me. Cynic.

We follow him through his days at MIT, pulling pranks with friends and discovering those interesting weaknesses in human thought processes that allowed him to get away with murder when he was young. His habits of wondering how things work carried him through his participation in the Manhattan Project, his travels to countries like Brazil and Japan, and led him through a life that was never without fascinating and entertaining discoveries.

Long story short (too late), Feynman is - or at least should be - a model for young people today. While the book isn't pitched towards young people, there are several lessons in it that should be taught to every child.

The first is that the world is infinitely interesting. Any kid who whines that she is bored needs to be shown the million and one ways that you can combat boredom just within a ten-foot radius of where you're sitting. Look at something - anything and ask yourself, "I wonder how that works," and then go find out. The possibilities are endless, and the potential exists that you may discover a passion you never knew you had. Feynman didn't start out wondering how electrons work - he fixed his neighbors' radios just because he could. One thing led to another, and next thing you know - BAM! Nobel Prize.

The second point, and it is connected to the first, is to never say No. In his essay, "But Is It Art?" he talks about how he learned to draw. It started when an artist friend offered to teach Feynman how to draw if he would teach the artist about science. While Feynman believed that he would be an absolutely atrocious artist, he still agreed to the challenge, and he stuck with it. Eventually he became well-known as a decent artist, even managing to sell some of his works. Now obviously, there are limits and caveats to "never" - there are times when saying No is the right thing to do. But when you find an opportunity to expand your abilities, to learn new things and face new challenges, the automatic "No" may deprive you of a joy that you never knew you could experience.

Third, you must know who you are. One of the problems inherent in living in a society is that there's always someone trying to tell you who you are, or at least who you should be. Your parents, teachers, friends, all have an image of you in their heads, and are all trying to mold you into that image, consciously or unconsciously. Add to that the government, media, corporations, advertisements, shysters, preachers and other deliverers of hokum and propaganda who are also trying to tell you who you really are, despite having never met you and being pretty sure that you don't already know yourself. And many people, sadly, don't. But Feynman did. He knew who he was, and that was all he needed. He occasionally let people think differently about him, but the thread that runs through this book is a rock-solid self-awareness that allowed him the self-confidence to pick up showgirls or try to turn down a Nobel Prize.

The caveat to this, and a corollary to the second point, is that you can always discover new things about who you are. All through the book, we see Feynman faced with a new opportunity that he thinks he can't do because it's just Not Him. Drawing, playing music, learning languages - those skills didn't fit into the mental model of who he thought he was, a flaw that all of us possess. A lot of us, without even giving it a try, might immediately discard something by saying, "Well, that's just not me." Maybe it could be. It takes courage, and the willingness to fall flat on your face, but if you can discover a new talent or a new passion, isn't it worth it?

Finally, remember that everyone else around you is just as human as you are. Don't be impressed by titles and uniforms, fancy suits and impressive business cards. Don't assume that just because someone wears a soldier's uniform or a thousand dollar suit that they are somehow "better" than you. Feynman not only resisted authority in so many of these tales, he actively worked to subvert it. Whether it's trying to sneak codes past military censors or breaking into the safe that held all the secrets of the atomic bomb, he never let a title get in the way of learning or growing.

One of my favorite Feynman stories related to this last point isn't actually in this book, but I'll mention it anyway. After the Challenger disaster back in 1986, NASA was called on the carpet to explain to Congress why their shiny new space shuttle went Kaboom. The NASA managers went on and on about the O-rings, filling their talk with supercilious jargon and doublespeak, hoping that their haughty attitudes and impenetrable explanations of why the cold weather made the O-rings fail would be comprehensible enough to satisfy the committee, yet obtuse enough to avoid actually admitting that they had done anything wrong.

While they were doing this, Feynman put a piece of the O-ring material into a glass of ice water and let it sit there for a while. Then he took it out, stretched it, and showed that it had lost the pliability that it needed to do its job. With a simple demonstration, he not only showed the fault that led to the Challenger explosion, but at the same time put a bunch of self-aggrandizing stuffed shirts in their places.

I love that story.

Anyway, if you're looking for a Feynman book to read - and who isn't? - this is the one to start with. There's not much hard talk about science in it, just lots of stories about a really interesting guy. Even if it doesn't make you want to get into quantum electrodynamic theory, I hope it still makes you look at the world in a different way.