Rating: 
Summary: In one word: Inspirational!
Review: I was flipping through TV channels one day, around 4 or 5 years ago, when I came upon a show with this guy playing bongo drums and singing about orange juice! Since I am a drummer, I was curious as to who the person was - he didn't look at all like a drummer. In fact, he looked more like a professor of some kind or another. I was intrigued and I kept watching this guy wailing away at the drums. Well, it of course turned out to be Richard Feynman. It was the first time I ever heard of Richard Feynman, but it was not the last. The TV show (it turned out to be a PBS special) was about Feynman and his quest to visit a place called Tuva something. Anyway, they talked about Feynman and his life in physics and teaching, and I was mesmorized. After watching this show, I purchased a copy of the book "Surely, Your Joking, Mr. Feynman" and I have become a Feynman fan ever since. The book is inspirational. Feynman comes across as a "doer" who understands the difference between awareness and knowledge, and points out that you can only really ever know anything by doing. My only regret is that I never got to see a live Feynman lecture. However, one can follow his example and continually challenge themselves by separating facts from opinions and assumptions, and by proving the facts themselves (therein lies true knowledge). All in all, an amazing book I would recomend to just about anyone!
Rating:
Summary: Yet Another Review !!
Review: Among the senior science students, this book needs no introduction. Good for its style of presentation and explanation of the simple facts that we think we knew, and yet far from the correct. I could read this book in a span of one week, and read many more times, and yet to read many more times, to get what the author intends to say. Myself being a Physics graduate, feels this book as indispensible.
Rating:
Summary: Genius in true form
Review: The book was given to me by my English major brother. He often sends books my way and they usually sit for quite a bit while I try to get through them, but for some reason I picked this one up and read it in one sitting. The last paragraph seemed like it had been written for me, "So I have one wish for you-the good luck to be somewhere where...you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity." Feynman remained true to himself and still had time to win a noble prize. Science readers and everyone else would benefit by his unique outlook on the world.
Rating:
Summary: If You Have to Pick One Book for Your Students to Read.
Review: I am a college professor. I have been having my classes read this book for the past 5 years. It is one of the best books that students can read in order to answer the question: Why am I in college?
To Learn. Most people emphasize the adventures and overlook the simple beauty of the book, i.e. lifelong learning. This book is a testament to the process of continuous learning throughout your life. College is where you start to put together the skills that you will use to learn for the rest of your life. It is my contention that I have learned more since I earned my Ph.D. than I did before. Feynman demonstrates that as long as you are alive, you are learning. A simple message indeed: enjoy learning.
Rating:
Summary: Nobel-winning physicist talks about life, learning.
Review: One of the best books I've ever read, fiction or non-fiction. Feynman's book had me laughing out loud so many times that people around me began to wonder what was wrong with me. Through his recollections about growing up, travels around the world, working at Los Alamos on the bomb and teaching at Cal Tech, Feynman shows what it's like to really live life. To get involved with interests and hobbies you might not consider. To strike up conversations with strangers. To play the bongos. After I finished this book, my one regret was that this genius is no longer alive. I'd like to write him a letter telling him that he had changed my life in some small yet meaningful ways. God bless this guy!
Rating:
Summary: Bad boy Feynman
Review: The theoretical physicist and Nobel price winner Richard Feynman wrote this
book in a bad boyish diary style, each chapter is independent and some
include repeats of earlier descriped events from a slightly different viewpoint. Not only was
Richard a brilliant scientist, he was also a self-taught lockpicker
(practicing this art in the time he worked for the Los Alamos project, opening "top secret" cabinets and safes,
thereby upsetting the military commander), a prankster, a public admirer of
female beauty and a bongo player. In short, he loved live.
Rating:
Summary: A warped genius in full splendour
Review: Well, what can I say about this book? The truth is, it left me in such laughing fits I looked utterly and totally maniacal while reading it in public. Who would have thought that a brain that he was (mind you he was a Nobel prize winner who worked with some of the greatest minds known to date, was involved in the making of the atomic bomb, lectured in Cornell, etc etc) was as warped as he?! I mean, this guy went through life playing pranks on people, doing the most weirdest experiments (such as ferrying ants to determine if they left trails and if they had a sense of geometry, and persisted in controlling his dreams to the point where he could navigate himself in full colour), tried to prove a point by peeing while doing a head-stand and hung out six times a week in a topless bar even while still a professor in Caltech! Feynman was a real character to say the least. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and truly don't remember the last time I loved a book this much for its style, its seeminly identifiable everyday-like experiences but with a hilarious Feynman twist to it, and most of all Feynman's life, pranks and adventures. Interestingly, he also tried to explain some (few) physics laws in humourous ways (probably for the scientifically impaired such as myself) and highlights the problem of rote-learning, which most encouragingly, he says is also practiced by MIT students. Finally, his insight into MIT and Princeton makes some of the best stories in this must-read book. A very enlightening and inspirational man. Very very very highly recommended
Rating: 
Summary: Did you ever think your Physics teacher was crazy?
Review: Genius.
That's a word that we throw around a lot nowadays. Anybody who reaches the top of their field, comes up with a new and brilliant observation or dramatically changes the way people do things is usually branded a genius.
Nonsense. I call it luck and I call it perserverence. Anybody can become really good at something if they do it their entire life. The true test of genius comes when somebody becomes an expert as something that they just started working on.
Richard P. Feynman is one of the most brilliant Physicists of our age--but his book is about almost everything BUT Physics. Feynman spends a little more than a paragraph discussing his Nobel Prize, and spends more time on the subjects that interest him even more, such as bongo drums. More time is spent covering Feynman's escapades in Las Vegas than his lectures at Cornell.
Feynman was a junior engineer on the Manhattan Project, but anybody expecting any deep observations about Oppenheimer, or any essays about the morality of nuclear energy will be disapointed. Instead, Feynman relates to us his stories of mischief in the New Mexico desert.
And who WANTS to read about Feynman's lectures in quantum mechanics? Who WANTS to read about his Nobel Prize? There are plenty of textbooks on those subjects. Feynman would rather tell us about his loves, adventures, and observations outside of the classroom. Feynman seems happier about being able to pick the locks of the world's most expensive safes, choreographing ballets using nothing but bongo drums, and outsmarting everybody that he comes in contact with. If there were Nobel Prizes for curiosity, mischief, and all-out general smart-aleckness, Feynman would have to make multiple acceptance speeches.
Equal part Stephen Hawking and Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Feynman has led a life rivaled only by that of Forrest Gump. But Feynman, instead, actually goes looking for adventure, and when he can't find it, he usually creates it.
A must read for those people who want to know if there is life beyond Physics.
Rating:
Summary: Insights on the life of the Greatest mind since Einstein!
Review: Definitely the best book I've read in several years!
Reading this book had a profound impact on my life as
it may on yours. Reading this is bound to stretch the
imaginations of educators, scientists, engineers,
"left brainers" and is a good read for the general public.
The companion paperback - Why Should you Care What Other
People Think? is equally as fascinating!
Dr. Olaf O. Storaasli,
NASA Langley Research Center,
Hampton, VA
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious
Review: Just a quickie: I just picked up this book for
the second time. It's one of the funniest books I've ever
read. Feynman was a wonderful eccentric.
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