Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character [Hardcover]

Richard P. Feynman (Author), Ralph Leighton (Editor), Freeman Dyson (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 17, 2005

An omnibus edition celebrating a great scientific mind and a legendary American original including a live recording.

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) thrived on outrageous adventures. In the phenomenal national bestsellers "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" the Nobel Prize-winning physicist recounted in an inimitable voice his adventures trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums, solving the mystery of the Challenger disaster, and much else of an eyebrow-raising, hugely entertaining, and astounding nature. One of the most influential and creative minds of recent history, Feynman also possessed an unparalleled ability as a storyteller, a delightful coincidence celebrated in this special omnibus edition of his classic stories. Now packaged with an hour-long audio CD of the 1978 "Los Alamos from Below" lecture, Classic Feynman offers readers a chance to finally hear a great tale in the orator's own voice.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Not many Nobel laureates in physics amuse themselves by playing the bongo drums and cracking safes. But the capricious personality of Richard Feynman contained more than a few surprises. And it is the sheer unpredictability of this high-spirited genius--partial to the company of Las Vegas showgirls when not in the Caltech lecture hall--that has attracted so many readers to his disarmingly candid memoirs, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? Now chronologically collated into one omnibus volume (packaged with a CD of one of Feynman's signature lectures), these memoirs display perhaps the most flamboyant personality in modern science. So colorful are some of the episodes here gathered that readers might forget (as Freeman Dyson remarks in his perceptive foreword) the careful and painstaking theorist who probed the atom with rare insight. Still, this collection does include Feynman's account of how--in quite casual circumstances--he spontaneously devised scientific experiments to determine the characteristics of ants' feet and humans' noses. Though the essays are available elsewhere, the autobiographical structure adds interest for the author's many fans. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Richard P. Feynman was born in 1918 and grew up in Far Rockaway, New York. At the age of seventeen he entered MIT and in 1939 went to Princeton, then to Los Alamos, where he joined in the effort to build the atomic bomb. Following World War II he joined the physics faculty at Cornell, then went on to Caltech in 1951, where he taught until his death in 1988. He shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1965, and served with distinction on the Shuttle Commission in 1986. A commemorative stamp in his name was issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 2005.

Ralph Leighton, Richard Feynman's great friend and collaborator, now lives in northern California.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton (November 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393061329
• ISBN-13: 978-0393061321
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #123,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( F ) > Feynman, Richard
  • #38 in Books > Science & Math > Essays & Commentary

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two books in one + CD..., March 14, 2006

By 

Curious about Science - See all my reviews

This review is from: Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character (Hardcover)

I have purchased almost all Feynman books so far.

Be forewarned. This book is a compilation of "Surely your joking..." and "What do you care what..." plus a bonus CD audio recording of a talk which was "in-te-res-ting" ( a Feynmanism).

If I had realized this, I would only have bought this book instead of all three.

For a more global and thorough exposition of his life, consider Gleick's '93 book "Genius".

For those wondering if they should find anything out about Feynman... There was a student that was asked if he wanted to come along to hear Feynman speak. "No. I'm going to study instead." Years later he was still kicking himself for passing up the opportunity. Feynman has this effect. Once you find out about him, you'll probably want to have done so earlier.

What's in store for you is a look back from the 20's to the 80's through the eyes of a physicist that married his sweet heart against the advice of family and lost her to tuberculosis a short time before a cure, rubbed elbows with the greats Einstein, Bohr, Dyson, Schwinger, Fermi etc, patrioticly worked on anti-aircraft defenses, helped build the atomic bomb, was bold enough to look at it directly behind a windshield that blocked the harmful ultra violet, cracked safes, deciphered Mayan hieroglyphs, learned to speak and taught in Portuguese, ironed out the problems in Quantum Electrodynamics, went around Caltech acting weird from a concussion for three weeks before any one noticed, "Well, next time say something!", he scolded. The '65 Nobel prize: "You'll raise more of a fuss if you refuse it.", learned to draw, play drums, inspired nanotechnologists, quantum computing research and after surviving 10 years of cancer helped trackdown the problem with the Space Shuttle Columbia and lastly said: "I'd hate to die twice. It's boring!"

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you like Feynman, you will like the CD very much!, November 18, 2008

By 

Frieswijk (Noordhorn, Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character (Hardcover)

The stories in the book are the same as those in the well known Surely you're joking and What do you care what other people think. I had read those (plus James Gleick's 'Genius'), but still liked this book very much because of the accompanying CD. Play the CD first, then read the stories again - that really made the stories come to live for me!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Highly Entertaining, June 28, 2008

By 

Georges Melki (Beirut,Lebanon) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character (Hardcover)

This autobiography of the great physicist Richard Feynman should appeal to all those readers who want to know about his private life and scientific activities in detail.However, most of the material is taken from two previous books, "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman" and "What do you care what other people think?". Some of the "adventures" were already related by James Gleick in his biography of Feynman, "Genius".So people who own these books can do without this one, unless they are real Feynman fans(like me!).
Another feature of this book is the CD which comes with it, and which contains a recording of a lecture by Feynman, covering most of the material of the Chapter entitled "Los Alamos from Below". I found this CD both entertaining and very useful, as it gives the listener a taste of what a lecture by Feynman sounded like. In fact, all the book, in its simplicity, sounds more like a series of lectures;and Feynman, in his distaste for "humanities", seems to enjoy "talking" to the public, with not a hint of literary artifice in his style!Of course, this could be seen as unbecoming such a brilliant mind, but Feynman keeps reminding the reader that he has no respect for anything but science(at one place, he talks about finding the professors of the philosophy department at Columbia particularly "inane").Some will also find his philandering a little exaggerated: but he is honest enough to admit that there is nothing he loves more than a "beautiful woman", and who could blame him?
Finally, it is worthwhile noting that, if some top-notch scientists had also literary gifts (two major examples being Poincaré and Einstein, whose writings are literary gems), Feynman couldn't care less: he even boasts that he does not give any importance to spelling mistakes, as long as the reader (or listener) understand what he is talking about! However, after reading his Nobel Banquet Speech , I was agreeably surprised with a much better style, which he even admits in the book. Talking about this speech, he says(p.343):"But then I said I received, all at once, a big pile of letters - I said it much better in the speech- reminding me of all the people that I knew; letters from childhood friends who jumped up when they read the morning newspaper and cried out 'I know him!he's that kid we used to play with and so on...'".Feynman seems to be quoting from memory, because this is not exactly what he said in the speech:"...victorious cries of 'I told you so' by those having no technical knowledge-their successful prediction being based on faith alone..."(see Nobelprize.org for the complete speech).