The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

“Feynman remains fun and informative. Here are yet more comments, anecdotes, and overviews from a charismatic rule breaker with his own, sometimes compelling, views about what science is and how it can be done.”

Publishers Weekly

“This work, drawn from several sources, including speeches, interviews, and articles, has a personal feel. And Sean Runnette delivers it in a personal, conversational way… Perhaps the most illuminating and interesting part—for non-physicists, anyway—is the behind-the-scenes discussion of life at Los Alamos, New Mexico, during the WWII atomic bomb project. The account shows Feynman’s impish side and humanizes this episode in the history of the war. Some of the entries are highly technical, but Runnette carries them off without hesitating or stereotyping the speaker with a pedantic tone.”

AudioFile

“It is an ironic twist of fate that Feynman the iconoclast has become a twentieth-century icon. Feynman has a large and devoted following not because of his famous hijinks, or his skill as a bongo drum performer, or even his Nobel Prize in quantum electrodynamics. Feynman became an icon because he was a man of great integrity who did physics because it was fun. This collection of thirteen short works is a pleasure to read…Intended for a general audience, these lectures and presentations cover a wide range of topics, including his early life, philosophy, religion, nanotechnology, the future of computing, Los Alamos, fun with science, science and society, and the Challenger disaster. Recommended.”

Library Journal

“The most original mind of his generation.”

Freeman Dyson, renowned theoretical physicist and mathematician

“[Feynman’s] fans will enjoy his recollections of his father and of his work on the atom bomb project when he was a somewhat awestruck nobody rubbing elbows with world-famous physicists. A popular addition to Feynmania.”

Booklist

“More gems from the Feynman factory. If some things are old or borrowed, it hardly matters: there are enough new or unfamiliar to charm fans…All said, of course, in the idiom of the boy from New York whose pleasure in finding things out affords the reader another sort of pleasure.”

Kirkus Reviews

“This marvelous collection of talks, interviews, and essays offers a memorable sample of the wit, brilliance, and irreverence of the most celebrated physicist of our time. The more one reads of Feynman, the more one falls in love with his refreshingly enthusiastic view of the world.”

Alan Guth, theoretical physicist and cosmologist