DIY in July Best Books of the Month Shop Men's Sneakers Shop Men's Sneakers Shop Men's Learn more nav_sap_plcc_6M_fly_beacon Nosaj Thing The Next ce_gno_flyout_2014 Amazon Fire TV Subscribe & Save Create an Amazon Wedding Registry Shop all Home Theater services TV Installation Home Network Installation Sound Bar Installation Shop all expendables expendables expendables Amazon Echo Amazon Echo All-New Kindle Paperwhite GNO Shop Cycling on Amazon Learn more
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Qty:1
  • List Price: $17.95
  • Save: $5.55 (31%)
FREE Shipping on orders over $35.
Only 11 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Gift-wrap available.
Genius: The Life and Scie... has been added to your Cart
Used: Good | Details
Sold by Reclaim Goods
Fulfilled by Amazon
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: Eligible for FREE Super Saving Shipping! Fast Amazon shipping plus a hassle free return policy. A bit of shelf wear. Tight binding. Light writing, no highlighting. A nice clean copy.
Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See all 2 images

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman Paperback – November 2, 1993

by
James Gleick (Author)
› Visit Amazon's James Gleick Page
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author? Learn about Author Central
James Gleick (Author)
163 customer reviews
See all 19 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle
"Please retry"
$9.99
— —
Hardcover
"Please retry"
—
$7.18 $0.01
Paperback
"Please retry"
$12.40
$4.62 $0.01
Audible, Unabridged
"Please retry"
$28.95
or Free with Audible 30-day free trial
Audio, Cassette, Audiobook
"Please retry"
—
$75.60 $9.81
Unknown Binding
"Please retry"
—
$28.88 —
Best Books of the Month
See the Best Books of the Month
Want to know our Editors' picks for the best books of the month? Browse Best Books of the Month, featuring our favorite new books in more than a dozen categories.
$12.40 FREE Shipping on orders over $35. Only 11 left in stock (more on the way). Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman + Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) + "What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character
Price for all three: $33.18

Some of these items ship sooner than the others.

Buy the selected items together

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you've read any of Richard Feynman's wonderful autobiographies you may think that a biography of Feynman would 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.

From Publishers Weekly

It would be hard to tell personal stories about the late Nobelist Feynman (1918-1988) better than the subject himself did in What Do You Care What Other People Think? To his credit, Gleick does not try. Rather, he depicts Feynman's "curious character" in its real context: the science he helped develop during physics' most revolutionary era. Fans of Feynman's own bestseller, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! , " won't be disappointed by his colleagues' recollections of his reckless obsession with doing science (a grad-school dorm neighbor once opened Feynman's door to find him rolling on the floor as he worked on a problem); but the anecdotes punctuate an expanded account of Feynman the visceral working scientist, not Feynman the iconoclast. This biography wants to measure both the particle and the wave of 20th-century genius--Feynman's, Julian Schwinger's, Murray Gell-Mann's, and others'--in the quantum era. Gleick seems to have enjoyed the cooperation of Feynman's family plus that of a good many of his colleagues from the Manhattan Project and the Challenger inquiry (in which Feynman played a scene-stealing role), and he steadily levies just enough of the burden of Feynman's genius on the reader so that the physicist remains, in the end, a person and not an icon of science. A genius could not hope for better. Gleick is the author of Chaos: The Making of A New Science.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE
Best Books of the Month
Best Books of the Month
Want to know our Editors' picks for the best books of the month? Browse Best Books of the Month, featuring our favorite new books in more than a dozen categories.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 531 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (November 2, 1993)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0679747044
  • ISBN-13: 978-0679747048
  • Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.1 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (163 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #94,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info, give feedback on images, or tell us about a lower price?

Important Information

Ingredients
Example Ingredients

Directions
Example Directions

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 88 people found the following review helpful
A more sober look at Feynman
By A reader on January 14, 2006
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Many accounts of Feynman read as a sequence of gee-whiz feats of dazzling theatricality. Gleick's take on him is more measured. The author nevertheless manages to capture the irreverent spirit and ebullient persona of this larger-than-life physicist while using everyday language to describe the latter's brilliant contributions to quantum electrodynamics (QED).

Throughout the book, Gleick gives us many instances that showcase Feynman's lifelong refusal to abide by what he considered pointless or hypocritical social norms. He carried over this unorthodoxy to his work, often coming up with approaches often considered bizzarre by his peers, to deal with the conundrums of QED.

In deft language and simple analogies, Gleick outlines the developments of quantum mechanics until Feynman's time. The author them goes on to describe the renormalization approach of Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga that offered an ingenious method of removing the puzzling self-interaction terms that would otherwise lead to infinite (unphysical) field quantities.

In chronicling Feynman's life, Gleick gives us vivid vignettes of the physicist's encounters with the other luminaries in his field, his refusal to accept anything unquestioningly, the sheer energy, originality and versatality with which he approached every aspect of his life and his often messy and volatile relationships with women. Paying tribute to Feynman's genius while portraying the many aspects of this brilliant persona is a daunting task; Gleick has risen to the monumental challenge with grace and profound insight.
3 Comments Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
47 of 48 people found the following review helpful
A Rare Biography
By sneaky-sneaky VINE VOICE on August 20, 2006
Format: Paperback
There are a couple of biographies that ascend beyond the level of our expectations, William Manchester's two-volume biography of Churchill is one, and "Genius" is another. Dick Feynman makes a biographer's work easier, the depth of his character, genius, and humor are limitless. Physicist Richard Feynman was also an accomplished safecracker, the inventor of QED (quantum electrodynamics), and whatever he turned his hand to, be it bongo drums or painting, the results were invariably immortalized in museums or symphony orchestras. Feynman famously dipped an O-Ring into ice water to demonstrate the cause of the Challenger disaster, and estimated the kilotonnage yielded at the Trinity test by observing the displacement of a handful of shredded paper.

Feynman was no slouch as a writer himself, penning "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", "Adventures of a Curious Character", and "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out." James Gleick has written a number of books, beginning with "Chaos" a good introduction to the science, and he has progressed as a writer to works like "Faster", "What Just Happened", and "Isaac Newton." A finalist for the National Book Award, "Genius" is Gleick's finest work and undeservedly missed out.
5 Comments Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
35 of 36 people found the following review helpful
This red book is my Good Book (paperback versio is red)
By Eduardo Antico on December 23, 2004
Format: Paperback
This is the only book I will ever give 5 stars, because reading it is a spiritual experience. It came from my old supervisor's library collection and later I purchased my own copy.

Gleick's conception of physics is quite accurate, and his writing style is sufficiently colourful, that this is one of the few books I always go back for passages. His writing of Feymann, his colleagues, and certain events are almost like reading a novel, adding charm to the otherwise blend perception to the world of science.

More importantly, it is Gleick's portrayal of Feymann as human -- with flaws, feelings, friends and enemies -- than a mystical figure, that makes it wonderful to read as a biography. He made no attempt to glorify his achievements, nor did he praise his talents. This, I find, a very humble gesture.

In fact, this is such an impact to me, when I finished reading this book, I decided to quit work and persue my Ph.D., which I am doing now.
Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Feynman, A Genius
By Math kid on April 17, 2006
Format: Paperback
In Genius by James Gleick, the author writes a complete biography of Richard Feynman, spanning his entire life and achievements. Richard Feynman went to MIT and then Princeton, helped create the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, and worked at Cornell and Caltech. He was a very imaginative thinker with new, creative ideas. His work with quantum electrodynamics won him a Nobel Prize. He had to overcome the death of his wife and had to acknowledge that his friend at Los Alamos was a Russian spy. The author was compelled to recount the story because Richard Feynman was a very interesting man with a lively personality who was also a genius. He also had a very interesting life. The book not only discusses Feynman's life, but his contemporaries' lives as well. It brings the world of cutting-edge physics to the average person, in language that they can understand. Someone would be compelled to read this book because it has enough science for those that are interested, at the same time having enough human interaction for someone who does not have a science background. The book presents Feynman on a very personal, human level. He had a charismatic personality, an exciting life, and made great contributions to the field of science.
Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
53 of 67 people found the following review helpful
Great, Though a Lot Turns Up Missing
By R. Williams VINE VOICE on January 8, 2002
Format: Paperback
If getting people to turn pages was the only measure of a writer, Gleick would be at the top of his craft; I ripped through this book in 3 days (and likewise found Chaos very compelling). But, alas, there are other considerations and for me, the most curious thing about this book is the degree to which the author sets the table and serves a burning meal then leaves most the courses half eaten.
For instance, you would think from the title, that you were also in for a discourse on the concept and/or practice of genius. Instead, predictable anecdotal information comes along (more often than not reinforcing the cliche rather than an individual experience of genius) and then, when the author decides to take up the topic, he makes a few remarks about the geneology of the concept, tries to talk about Mozart in a way that borders on hamhanded (while it also produced an unfortunate flashback to surely one of the most banal treatises on genius: Amadeus) and then after a few other observations, he moves on. The title seems to promise the cliche, but the wonderful quixotic image that emerges from the long course of Feynman's life is rather the retreat of the concept. As the most likely Einstein of his generation, Feynman ended up making significant contributions, but certainly fell far short of the previous generation's measure of genius: general relativity. Instead whole hordes of people pushed the ball forward little by little into the quantum age and Feynman ironically became one of the ones who defied the belief in a grail that would unlock all the secrets.
The other part that seemed truly neglected was the final scene when Feynman served on the Challenger committee (shortly before his death).Read more ›
1 Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Less funny and engaging than "Surely You're Joking

Exhaustive exploration of the life and works of Richard Feynman. Somewhat heavy on the science in parts, but while difficult to follow at times was ultimately rewarding and... Read more

Published 2 days ago by Adam J. Becherer
Solid Look at an Outstanding Scientist and Individual

For having never met Feynman, the author did a remarkable job of chronicling his life, achievements, and character. Read more

Published 28 days ago by Todd McFarland
Almost as extraordinary as the man himself

As a layman, I learned a lot about physics reading this excellent biography. In order to teach someone about someone as multifaceted as Dr. Read more

Published 28 days ago by Peter B Miller
Couldn't finish

It may be my fault. I could only get to page 73. The title says the Life and Science of Richard Feynman. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Eileen Boggess
Richard Feynman was amazing as a professor and enjoyed his life to the...

Richard Feynman was amazing as a professor and enjoyed his life to the fullest and was not afraid to tell about his mistakes. Great book

Published 1 month ago by vcraig
History of modern physics

This is good but my goodness it is long. It is not so much about Richard Feynman as about the entire history of the physics he was involved in. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Brass player
A wonderful trip through the life of a real genius

A wonderful trip through the life of a real genius. And a easy to read bonus a trip through the 20th century Physics for people interested in the subject. Five stars is not enough.

Published 2 months ago by Douglas Lauria
You Won't Be Disappointed

One of my highest rated books for the enjoyment I got out of reading it. I like Gleick's manner of writing and his structure. If you're on the fence, get it. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Annie
Outstanding Biography of Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman truly was a genius in physics. For scientists this is a must read book about one of the brightest and most insightful scientists of the 20th century. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Thomas Andert
Five Stars

Great book, I'm sorry I didn't get to meet him, he seemed like a no-nonsense guy

Published 2 months ago by Dan

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
This item: Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
Price: $12.40
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com
Set up a giveaway

There's a problem loading this menu right now.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.

Want to discover more products? Check out these pages to see more: genius store, "a peril and a hope: the scientists' movement in america"