Rating: 
Summary: Euros well spent!
Review: Richard Feynman achieved something like cult status, almost on a par with Stephen Hawking and for some time I resisted the temptation to read him. This was partly because physics is not my area of interest and also because Hawking was such a disappointment with his naïve belief that the final unified theory of everything would soon be invented. Also it seemed that the Hawking books are much bought but little read, thereby diminishing the status of cult figures in science writing.On the way back from the Popper Centenary Conference, in the airport Frankfurt, curiosity won over skepticism, also I had a few euros to unload, so I took on board this collection of "best short works". I now consider the euros well spent and Feynman fully deserving of respect and admiration. Under the circumstances, with a satchel of Popper stuff from Vienna, the most striking thing about Feynman was his relentlessly critical, imaginative and enthusiastic approach to everything, especially science. In short, he lived and breathed the philosophy of Karl Popper. That might have surprised him because it is hard to say whether he had the most contempt for philosophers or for the soft social sciences. Maybe Feynman is too hard on the social sciences. It is helpful to remember that physicists restrict their predictions to model systems, otherwise they settle for explanations in principle. We can explain in principle the trajectory of leaves that fall off a tree but nobody would be expected to predict which ones will end up in the street and which will fly up on to the roof and block your gutter. Similarly in some areas of the social sciences (those that are not pure ideology and verbalism) we can predict tendencies, such as increased prices due to import restrictions, without being able to predict the size of the increase due to the many other factors that are involved in setting prices. Feynman had the incredible good fortune to be in the right place at the right time but that would not have worked if he did not have the capacity to do the right thing at the right time as well. Like all great artists and scientists, he was captivated by his work, so at times nothing else mattered. That saved him from nerves, even as youth, when he found himself lecturing to an audience that included Einstein and other great men in the field. His hands were shaking when he took his papers from the envelope to start talking . "Then something happened to me which has always happened since...If I'm talking physics , I love the thing, I think only about physics, I don't worry where I am; I don't worry about anything". This probably also saved him from being disabled by the impending death of his first wife who was fading away while he worked on the Big Bomb at Los Alamos. His capacity to focus on the physics and not the audience made him an invaluable foil for Bohr. Everyone else was so overawed by Bohr that they never challenged his ideas. "I was always worried by the physics; if the idea looked lousy, I said it looked lousy...later Bohr said to his son 'He's the only guy who is not afraid of me, and will say when I've got a crazy idea...when we want to discuss ideas, we're not able to do it with these guys who say everything is yes, yes Dr Bohr. Get that guy first.'" Like most collections of occasional pieces, there is a tendency to repetition of key themes such as the uncertainty of all knowledge and the inferior nature of the social sciences. Also it tends to lack continuity and physics buffs will probably find that it lacks depth. This is because almost all of the pieces were written for general audiences and for most of us the lack of depth is a strong point because we only get lost in the depths.
Rating: 
Summary: The Displeasure of Dealing with a Wise Guy
Review: Richard Feynman is a cultural icon, inspiring imitation, adulation and idolatry. But he was also a con-man who made a virtue of his many vices. Certainly he was an exceptional scientist, else he would not have won the Nobel Prize. But culturally he was an ignoramus, linguistically--a kid, and professionally--a superstar who shirked responsibility and played the role of maverick, even as he enjoyed all the professional percs. He persuaded everyone that he couldn't help it: he was interested only in finding out how things work and could devote himself only to that. Others could do the busywork, run the world and educate themselves. This ploy worked so well that when he spoke in his jerky 1940's plain-man language it seemed that he was bringing elevated subjects down to earth, making them simple and easy for the common man. Actually he couldn't construct a rich sentence or a weighty paragraph. The same when he spoke about history or religion--it seemed that he had unpeeled the manifold layers of cultivation and interpretation. Actually he only touched the first layer. If you imagine in this collection that it is not he, Richard Feynman, speaking, but anyone else, you will discover that most of what is said reaches the level of only a bright teenager. Even when he speaks about science, he spouts platitudes: always doubt, always test, etc. Yet, for all that, there is something to be said for a great scientist who did not advance beyond being a bright teen. In these lesser articles and addresses, Feynman appears with all his mannerisms, shortcomings and insights, an original character if ever there was one. His remarks are amusing, irritating, stimulating and sometimes even inspiring. You can't fail to marvel, but you can stop far short of idolatry.
Rating:
Summary: A Nice Science Book
Review: Richard Feynman was a great physicist and a wonderful teacher. In another nice book THE BIBLE ACCORDING TO EINSTEIN, he is quoted as saying "The fact that I understand this rose -- the light reflected off its surface, how it is composed of cells, why it is red, the evolutionary origin of the bees' attraction to it, and so on -- these things do not in any way diminish my appreciation of its beauty. In fact, they enhance my ability to enjoy the rose." This says it all.
Rating:
Summary: nice collection by Robbins
Review: Richard Feynman was a great physicist of the 20th Century. He was unconventional but had a way of making physics interesting to students and lay people alike. When I was an undergraduate at Stony Brook in 1969, I took freshman physics from Lamb and Fowler. They had their own notes for our reference but used Feyman's lectures as the course text. Because it lacked structure it was a difficult book (actually two volumes) to learn from. It clearly inspired our professors and many of Feynman's Cal Tech students as well. For me and most of my classmates at Stony Brook we found that buying a copy of the conventional text by Halliday and Resnick was necessary to get us through the course. In this collection of works Feynman has a discussion where he eplains the difficulty of teaching and motivating. He admits that he has not figured out how to do it. His father's approach to investigation worked well on his son but not his daughter. She wanted structure and repetition. He proposes trying many different approaches so as to reach as many students as possible. Robbins has collected a number of interesting short articles,publications and interviews that show the type of person Feynman was and his dedication to physics. This came about for him through the pleasure that comes with discovering how things really work. This is the common theme in the book. He discusses his experience at Los Alamos during the Manhattan project, mainly covering his dislike for the security and censorship that was part of this crucial phase in the development of the atomic bomb. I also enjoyed reading about his theories regarding how small computers may one day be. My favorite chapter is his frank and careful minority report on the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. If you have read and liked Feynman before, this will not disappoint you. It comes with a very interesting foreward by Freeman Dyson and an editor's introduction to prepare you for what is ahead.
Rating: 
Summary: The 'extended' Feynman
Review: So you've read all the usual books on Feynman and by Feynman.... but where this one scores over the others is in portraying a picture of Feynman the readers are mostly unaware of. Beuatifully touched upon is the relationship between Feynman and his father, and how his father influenced his thinking and helped him grow. Another pearl in this is Feynmans report on the Challenger inquiry, which clearly is Feynman at his rarest best - explaining the workings of space ships and Nasa politics and hence the cause for failure, in such simple terms that one cant help but be amazed at the genius of the man. There are also essays whic clearly show Feynman as the father of modern Nanotechnology and explain its possibility with breathtaking simplicity. This is a must read for those who have read the other Feynman books, and is worth keeping. The only reason I have kept it at 4 stars and not 5, is that the book is a little desultory at times, from its title and hence, alleged purpose. But who cares about a few carelss brush strokes in a masterpiece?
Rating:
Summary: The Pleasure of Feynman
Review: This book is a great introduction to Feynman, though I would still have to recommend "Surely You're Joking..." for the novice. That book was not technical at all, and exposed Feynman's joy in both learning and being a prankster. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is (slightly) more technical in places, but hardly difficult. It is also much more well-rounded, allowing greater insight into Feynman, who was:
1. Smart as hell
2. Arrogant
3. Happy only when learning
4. Quite a storyteller (in every sense of the word)
5. Thoroughly unconventional The piece by Freeman Dyson was worth the price of admission, and led me to investigate his works (also highly recommended). I also think the very underrated Challenger Inquiry report was extremely interesting. Keep in mind, though, that many people I've spoken with really dislike Feynman's arrogance (one person said "he's just a jerk"). I personally feel he had every right to be vain, but over the course of four books, it does get tiring.
Rating:
Summary: A grab-bag of a book.
Review: This book is a hodge-podge of personal and professional reminiscenses and interviews. Feynmann tells stories about building the A-bomb, his Dad, teaching his children, curiosity, learning, "the big picture," and how he learned that different minds work differently. I enjoyed parts of the book, particularly the parts most related to the book's title, like how his Father taught him scientific curiosity. It is obvious that a lot of people have respect for Feynman, and I don't doubt he earned it. But as a story-teller, while he is sometimes interesting, frankly a lot of the time he is rather incoherent. The interviews are especially inarticulate, fumbling for words. I guess you had to be there. Elsewhere, Feynman comes across as another famous scientist piddling in other fields in his spare time. As an educator he is interesting, though not always fully syntactical. What he teaches well is his own infectious enthusiasm for "finding things out." Like some other scientists who are not very familiar with other fields, he tends to depict that pleasure as an almost exclusively scientific one. But of course Confucius, Origen, and Augustine knew the same pleasure, as do we in the contemporary humanities. As a teacher myself, I agree that enthusiastic curiosity is itself the greatest lesson. Feynman communicates that well, among other things. Feynman admits that "in a field that is so complicated that true science is not able to get anywhere, we have to rely on a kind of old-fashioned wisdom." It would be truer to say that science is one in a continuum of epistomological methods, from the most direct (and limited), like math, to "hard sciences" like physics and chemistry, to "soft sciences" (paleontology) and up through history to psychology and finally theology. Like many scientists, and antagonistic philosophers (Rorty), Feynman confuses epistomological "hardness" with rationality, in the sense of finding out what truly is, and being reasonably certain about it. The odd thing about Feynman's excursions into other fields is that he admits, "I'm still a very one-sided person and don't know a great deal." His editors think he's just being modest, I guess. Most of the time Feynman treats religion with formal respect (one gets the feeling he's been scolded before and doesn't want to pour oil on the fire). He is, in fact, rather ignorant on the subject, refuting silly heresies, and thinking he has got to the heart of the matter. At one point he compares the "Catholic religion in the Middle Ages" to Hitler and Stalin. I'm not Catholic, but in my opinion that reflects poorly on his understanding of the historical roots of science and democracy. For all Feynman's love of science, it's a pity he should be ignorant of where it came from. That such a grab-bag of a book would inspire the loyalty that is revealed in reviews below, is something I have great sympathy for. But it also demonstrates what many observers have commented on, the priest-like status that scientists have attained in Western culture. Books like this make me mourn for the sins of modern thought: over-specialization, the cults of celebrity and science, and philosophical confusion about how we know things. The book did make me think about how to teach, however, and introduced me to an interesting scientist. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man
Rating:
Summary: A grab-bag of a book.
Review: This book is a hodge-podge of personal and professional reminiscenses and interviews. Feynmann tells stories about building the A-bomb, his Dad, teaching his children, curiosity, learning, "the big picture," and how he learned that different minds work differently. I enjoyed parts of the book, particularly the parts most related to the book's title, like how his Father taught him scientific curiosity. It is obvious that a lot of people have respect for Feynman, and I don't doubt he earned it. But as a story-teller, while he is sometimes interesting, frankly a lot of the time he is rather incoherent. The interviews are especially inarticulate, fumbling for words. I guess you had to be there. Elsewhere, Feynman comes across as another famous scientist piddling in other fields in his spare time. As an educator he is interesting, though not always fully syntactical. What he teaches well is his own infectious enthusiasm for "finding things out." Like some other scientists who are not very familiar with other fields, he tends to depict that pleasure as an almost exclusively scientific one. But of course Confucius, Origen, and Augustine knew the same pleasure, as do we in the contemporary humanities. As a teacher myself, I agree that enthusiastic curiosity is itself the greatest lesson. Feynman communicates that well, among other things. Feynman admits that "in a field that is so complicated that true science is not able to get anywhere, we have to rely on a kind of old-fashioned wisdom." It would be truer to say that science is one in a continuum of epistomological methods, from the most direct (and limited), like math, to "hard sciences" like physics and chemistry, to "soft sciences" (paleontology) and up through history to psychology and finally theology. Like many scientists, and antagonistic philosophers (Rorty), Feynman confuses epistomological "hardness" with rationality, in the sense of finding out what truly is, and being reasonably certain about it. The odd thing about Feynman's excursions into other fields is that he admits, "I'm still a very one-sided person and don't know a great deal." His editors think he's just being modest, I guess. Most of the time Feynman treats religion with formal respect (one gets the feeling he's been scolded before and doesn't want to pour oil on the fire). He is, in fact, rather ignorant on the subject, refuting silly heresies, and thinking he has got to the heart of the matter. At one point he compares the "Catholic religion in the Middle Ages" to Hitler and Stalin. I'm not Catholic, but in my opinion that reflects poorly on his understanding of the historical roots of science and democracy. For all Feynman's love of science, it's a pity he should be ignorant of where it came from. That such a grab-bag of a book would inspire the loyalty that is revealed in reviews below, is something I have great sympathy for. But it also demonstrates what many observers have commented on, the priest-like status that scientists have attained in Western culture. Books like this make me mourn for the sins of modern thought: over-specialization, the cults of celebrity and science, and philosophical confusion about how we know things. The book did make me think about how to teach, however, and introduced me to an interesting scientist. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man
Rating:
Summary: More Feynman
Review: This book is a mixed salad which does not come up to the information and entertainment values of previous books published on Feynman. They seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel and in the next one I expect a copy of his Bar Mitzva speech, if he gave one.
Rating: 
Summary: scraping the bottom of the feynmaniana barrel
Review: This book is yet another posthumous compilation of Feynman's musings. With each successive book - starting from the wonderful transcriptions of Leighton, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman - they have been declining in quality for years. Well, this is a hodgepodge of paper scraps and even raw oral interviews that have been thrown together to exploit just about the last drop of these kinds of things, and I can say that I don't think the process should continue. There are some amusing things in this book and some interesting details, but there really isn't anything special except for the fact that Feynman enjoys the personality cult associated with a zany physics genius. He was an original character and, in physics, a truly great thinker. But that doesn't make every last little thing that he ever said or scribbled down interesting, except to uncritical devotees who live with the fantasy that everything he said was better than worthwhile. Indeed, if you know about something in great depth he writes (well talks) about, his views appear as superficial as the rest of non-specialists on the subjects. Where he is truly interesting in on physics, mathematics, and science - and the overwhelming majority of what he produced on those subjects is already available. I would not recommend this book, except as a source of Feynman trivia if that is your bag. Indeed, I had heard most of these things before - either in films about the man or from his earlier writings. As such, that makes this book the crassest attempt to commercially exploit the legacy of this great man yet again. If such a thing were possible, the editor should be ashamed.
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