Customer Reviews

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman

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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.

A compilation of chronologically lined-up short stories about Feynman's life, this book cannot be called an autobiography; we just get the « greatest hits ». We discover a really smart man through his relations with authority, art, science, religion, psychology, music and more. Feynman worked as a physicist but you don't find the typical introverted lab-coat nerd personality; instead we get to know a curious man with passions from lock picking to drums. Feynman mentions scientific stuff he works on to give context, but no more; we often forget he's a physicist (one of the most important physicists of the 20th Century, no less!): the book thus can be enjoyed by anybody, especially... you.

To borrow the phrase from MTV this is Feynman unplugged.

I really enjoyed his commencement talk that is last chapter in the book. He exhorts his listeners to create real empirically supportable results in their research. There is a new kind of scientist in our midst that I feel Dr. Feynman would have detested. This kind of scientist is less interested in the reality of what is being studied and more interested in advancing a certain agenda. There is a great web site (junkscience^com) that catalogues many of these scientific gunslingers.

This book is a retrospective that begins at the beginning and finishes in 1974 (many years before his report on the Challenger accident). It describes his early years working in a hotel, going to MIT, working at Los Alamos, and teaching at Cornell and Caltech. There are many demonstrations of his wicked wit and quirky (quarky?) sense of humor. He is quick to seize the opportunity to use his wit as is shown when he hides a door in his fraternity house.

This is a fun read!

This book contains by far the most astounding collection of stories I have ever read in a single work. The sentences move together smoothly, and every single one of them is interesting in some respect.

I usually do not read books because of the great deal of time involved in getting into the plot, but with this one, you can easily sit down and read a section and get right down into it. It's that well-written, with enough details to keep you intrigued and at the same time focused.

I'm a 16 year old kid, into the whole physics/math scene. When I first picked up the book, I found myself gripped. I let nothing interrupt my reading time. And while reading, I always sat on the edge of my chair. Never did I read in bed or reclined on a La-Z-boy. Now that's gotta tell you something!

When finished, a sudden passion overcame me. I had to be like Feynman! I whipped out all my physics books and began working through the problem sets like a madman.

Looking for a page-turner? Look no more. This is an absolute must for any science loving nerd.

"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.

Richard Feynman's novel, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" was a true joy. Yes, I had to read it for a Physics assignment, and yes, I chose it because it was one of the few interesting-looking ones, but I had a good time reading it in spite of it all. Feynman's series of vignettes about his life experiences were extremely amusing and the quick change of pace from story to story made this book a real page turner. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone needing a good read, a funny biography, or a physics assignment.

I thought this was a fun book about a tremendously unique and funny character. I don't know a lot about physics or science or anything, but this book doesn't get bogged down with that. Rather, Feynman explains to you in plain english what the issues or problems he was facing at different times were. That's not half as interesting, however, as his creative solutions to the problems and his application of common sense to them! This is more times than not what will make you laugh out loud.

The most insightful parts of the book to me were his experiences working on "the bomb" and his study of art. These really show you his character on a more personal level. You see the scientist in him, too, though. The most pivotal thing I got out of the book was that you should never take someone else's "proven" theory for granted. Always, always, always recreate the "proof" for yourself before you use it as a basis of further study.

I was given this book by my CIO (one of those guys who proudly label themselves as a "nerd") who told me to "read this book, it's rad". We're both voracious readers, so I knew this would be a great book, but I wasn't prepared for it to be such an "important" one. But important it is. This book details the life of a remarkably simple man driven by his passion for the truth, the sensory beauty of life, and the many mysteries of nature.

Ok, so getting a Nobel Prize and (for the most part) spawning the science of Modern Quantum clearly puts you in the category of "interesting", what really stands R. Feyman out from the rest of his peers is the exceptional balance he managed to strike in his life between Productive (Science, Manhattan Project, etc.) and Sensory (Travel, Musical talent, wife/women).

Stories of him being the only scientist at Trinity (where the first atom bomb he worked on was detonated) to get out from the protected bunker so he could "see" the detonation (jumped behind the glass in his truck because he WAS PRETTY SURE the gamma and X-rays wouldn't harm his eyes) and him leading a protest against the shutting down of a local strip bar (where he would spend many of his final days doing drawings), this book details the life of one of the bravest, most accomplished, and dynamic men of our time.

A very worthwile read for those who are looking for a quick entertaining read, or for a hero. I think you'll find them both in this book.

Hope this was helpful.

It was a pleasure to read these collected stories from Feynman's life. Each story is entertaining and often humorous or enlightening. Most remarkable I think is how honest these stories are. Feynman includes some very strange stories - particularly one about him hanging out in Vegas and trying to pick up women - that seem a bit out of place. But I think that is part of the appeal of this book: it is a very honest look at Feynman's rich life.

In a way, Feynman reminds me of the title character from Oliver Sack's "An Anthropologist on Mars" about an autistic woman who describes herself as continuously observing human behavior like an anthropologist on Mars. Feynman is constantly trying to do experiments to see how other people respond, including many enjoyable practical jokes. Maybe humans were sort of like physics for him, and he was just trying to perturb the system and see how they worked.

The real message I got out of these stories was how Feynman was so willing to try everything - particularly the things he was not very good at. He's a bad artist, so he decides to learn how to draw and ends up getting his own art show. He's not very musical, so he learns to play drums and ends up recording the music for a ballet. He doesn't know any biology, so he starts learning and ends up doing experiments with JD Watson. In one section he delves into Mayan history and starts deciphering the codecs. In another memorable chapter he learns the art of safecracking while at Los Alamos. This book sort of inspires me to try something I stink at and see how much I can accomplish. For Feynman, it seems like there was nothing he couldn't do.

Overall I think you will be glad if you get this book. However, I also got the book "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" and that was not as enjoyable. It was more of a collection of lectures he gave and was less personal. There was also considerable overlap in the stories.

My only real complaint is that there was not enough science in the stories, but there are plenty of other books by Feynman for that (QED and Six Easy Pieces among others). So if you haven't been introduced to Dick Feynman's writing, do yourself a favor and get "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"