| Digital List Price: | $15.95 |
| Kindle Price: | $9.99 Save $5.96 (37%) |
| Sold by: | Amazon.com Services LLC |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character Kindle Edition
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
A New York Times bestseller—the outrageous exploits of one of this century's greatest scientific minds and a legendary American original.
Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek; cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets; accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums; painting a naked female toreador. In short, here is Feynman's life in all its eccentric—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherW. W. Norton & Company
- Publication dateJune 28, 2010
- File size2714 KB
I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world.Highlighted by 2,340 Kindle readers
They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.Highlighted by 2,321 Kindle readers
Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.Highlighted by 2,063 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
Review
Amazon.com Review
Review
A storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain. Feynman proves once again that it is possible to laugh out loud and scratch your head at the same time.--K. C. Cole
Books like this are temptations--to give up reading and devote life to rereading...The book is a litmus paper: anyone who can read it without laughing out loud is bad crazy.
Feynman is legendary among his colleagues for his brilliance and his eccentricity...It's not hard to smile all the way through.
Quintessential Feynman--funny, brilliant, bawdy...enormously entertaining.
A storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain. He proves once again that it is possible to laugh out loud and scratch your head at the same time.
Buzzes with energy, anecdote and life. It almost makes you want to become a physicist.
Quintessential Feynman--funny, brilliant, bawdy . . . enormously entertaining. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From AudioFile
About the Author
From Library Journal
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Publisher
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B003V1WXKU
- Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (June 28, 2010)
- Publication date : June 28, 2010
- Language : English
- File size : 2714 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 352 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #135,447 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #53 in Biographies of Scientists
- #123 in Physics (Kindle Store)
- #307 in Scientist Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

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.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Ralph Leighton (born 13 November 1949) is a biographer, film producer, and friend of the late physicist Richard Feynman. He recorded Feynman relating stories of his life. Leighton has released some of the recordings as The Feynman Tapes. These interviews became the basis for the books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, which were later combined into the hardcover anniversary edition Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character. Leighton is an amateur drummer and founder of the group Friends of Tuva. In 1990 he wrote Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman's Last Journey.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images

-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
I read Surely You're Joking shortly after it came out in 1985, as did several of my coworkers. There were differing opinions. I enjoyed it. To me it reads as if Feynman believed he could get away with expressing his unfiltered thoughts publicly. Some of those thoughts were of the inside kind that most people know better than to say out loud. If Feynman thought he could get away with this, he was right! The book was a best-seller, and some of us, at least, interpreted as an extremely intelligent and entertaining man expressing the thoughts that many of his tribe are secretly afraid to share.
Here's my advice to readers of Surely You're Joking. As you read, you will encounter bits that strike you as reprehensible. When that happens, try to think hard about them from Feynman's point of view. In many, perhaps most, such cases you will decide that the passages in question are really as reprehensible as you first thought. But in others you may realize they are not. Let me give an example. In the chapter "Los Alamos from Below" he talks about how he learned that the atomic bomb was going to be tested.
'After we’d made the calculations, the next thing that happened, of course, was the test. I was actually at home on a short vacation at that time, after my wife died, and so I got a message that said, “The baby is expected on such and such a day.”'
I overheard two of my coworkers expressing their outrage at this casual, apparently callous mention of his wife's death. They clearly thought he should have expressed more pain. My thought was "A man who had felt less, might." (Bonus points if you recognize the quote!) After all, he's talking about Los Alamos with a friend 40 years after the events in question. It would not be sensible to derail the conversation with a eulogy for Arlene.
In fact, the sequel "What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character contains a chapter entitled “What Do You Care What Other People Think?” about his love for and marriage with Arlene. Ralph Leighton, who compiled these recollections, describes it as follows
"The story of Arlene, from which the title of this book was taken, was painful for Feynman to recount. It was assembled over the past ten years out of pieces from six different stories. When it was finally complete, Feynman was especially fond of this story, and happy to share it with others."
So, give the guy a break, OK?
An entertaining book, but perhaps too unfiltered for many readers.
Top reviews from other countries
I ordered 2 books: for my grandson and a friend.
Reviewed in India on September 18, 2023














