Rating: 
Summary: One of the worst books I've ever seen.
Review: This book is so bad that I didn't make it past the first few pages. Another reviewer here agrees with me that this book gets off to a very bad start immediately when he says, "I almost gave it up after the first couple chapters, but finally made it through it all." The problem I have with this book is that the author describes events in Feynman's life in a way that could not possibly allow the reader to get a proper sense of the events. It is like he is combining different events into the same dissusion. Totally distroying the context of the events. Anyone who has read the other great Feynman books that are out there will cringe when they attempt to read this book. If you have never read a book about Feynman, do no start with this one. Start with "Surly you're jokeing Mr. Feynman." This book is legendary for a reason.
Rating: 
Summary: A Miracle of Science
Review: This is a book not to be missed. James Gleick's lucid prose and Richard Feynmann's fascinating personality combine to form perhaps the best biography I have ever encountered, one which scientists and non-scientists alike will find accessible and often inspirational. The journey from Far Rockaway to Los Alamos to the Nobel Prize is filled with passion and perspiration, inspiration and, at times, irreverance, and Gleick is a most able tour guide.
Rating: 
Summary: Captures Feynman Folklore but Fails to Put Him into Context
Review: This is a fun book, hard to put down, and is comparable to a romance novel or a so-called "chick flick"--with unfortunately about as much depth. If you are a Feynman fan or a Physics fan or someone who is considering Physics as a career--this book is 5 stars. What the author omits one can can figure out,if you already know quite a bit. I dropped out of Physics as I preferred reading about the great Physicists to working through the problems in the Electricity and Magnetism or Quantum Mechanics texts, and did not have the feel for all those waveicles. Since my brother was for a time a theoretical Physicist I heard much of the Feynman folklore. Gleick captured the folklore quite well. But the power and influence of the famous lectures given by Feynman to Caltech freshman and sophomore Physics students(known simply as Feynman's Lectures)was understated. During the last half of the 60s and through the 70s it would be hard not to find Physics Graduate students at the elite Universities (Chicago,MIT and so on) intensely studying Feynman's lectures as preparation for their PHD comps. This is so well known that the conceitful dream of other introductory text writers such as Samuelson in Economics, is to have the same role in their field. The real shortcoming of the book is that it is a 90% solution. It would be interesting to have compared him with other Physics theoreticans--as a group. They are quite similar in many ways. You look at the famous and not so famous in that area and they have a set of commonalities. They will have self-taught themselves Mathematical subjects and found those challenges less exciting than understanding the physical world. In fact,that is the rationale of their existence, at least for a time. They all need to be do-it-themselfers. Many are great puzzle solvers in other contexts. They almost all had a certain kind of nurturing to encourage them to develop their talents along the way. The author leaves the false impression that these are special characteristics of Feynman. They are not--he is special enough in his achievement. The title genius in that already extremely intelligent group goes to those, like Feynman's fellow Noble recipients for developing Quantum ElectroDynamics (QED),who learned the regular stuff/theory so well they were smart enough to figure out difficult solutions for the problem that was implicit in the prior theory. The rarer type of genius is the Feynman treated the problem as if he had figured out just enough to know what the problem was and used novel means (now known as Feynman diagrams)to solve the problem--ignoring the powerful but obscuring technology developed by those who came before and developing new more usable tools. Despite its originality Feynman did not regard the QED in the same light as his discovery (independent initially of his fellow Cal Tech professor Gell Mann)of a theory of weak interactions. But he regarded his Lectures in Physics as his great contribution--no where could you get that from Gleick. A very interesting oversight was that Gell-Mann suffered writers block but was emersed in the standard literature. But Feynman often worked things out but would not work them out in publishable form but when they were forced to work together they did very well indeed. This relationship should have been explored in more depth. I wondered did Gell-Mann serve as the filter to let some of the standard work or not? The late great contemplative Thomas Merton kept himself cut out from the news while in the monestary except that which was shared with him by friends such as the Berrigan brothers and James Forest. Did Feynman have similar friends or associates who informed him of problems out in the Physics world he might be interested in? Feynmann appeared to have few lifelong friends beyond family if you listened only to Gleick, but some of his sometime collaborators seemed to have been friends, but not of long standing. This book generates more questions than answers and adds too little to the knowledge of Feynman but synthesizes quite well. Good work, well written but not up to the clarity or completeness standards of the subject.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book about Feynman
Review: This is by far the best biography about Richard
Feynman to date. All the others, even the ones
written after this book, pale in comparison.
It is wonderfully written. It lets you see and
feel Feynman not only as one of the giants in
20th century physics, but perhaps more
importantly, as a human, with his passion,
his idiosyncracies, and the same struggles
and pain he had to go through just like everyone
else.
Ironically, Gleick never met
Feynman, which goes to show how great a writer
he is. I never spoke to Feynman, but he was
invited to our freshman physics classes once
(at Caltech), shortly before he died.
I remember waking up the morning after he
died, found out about it, and was very much
saddened, and saw the banner "We love you Dick"
hung across the Milliken Library on the Caltech
campus. For readers who never met or saw
Feynman in person, this is truly a great
biography. I read it a few years ago, and I
still recommend it to my friends all the time.
-- Ed Lee, Santa Barbara.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book about Feynman
Review: This is by far the best biography about RichardFeynman to date. All the others, even the oneswritten after this book, pale in comparison. It is wonderfully written. It lets you see and feel Feynman not only as one of the giants in 20th century physics, but perhaps more importantly, as a human, with his passion, his idiosyncracies, and the same struggles and pain he had to go through just like everyone else.
Ironically, Gleick never met Feynman, which goes to show how great a writer he is. I never spoke to Feynman, but he was invited to our freshman physics classes once (at Caltech), shortly before he died. I remember waking up the morning after he died, found out about it, and was very much saddened, and saw the banner "We love you Dick" hung across the Milliken Library on the Caltech campus. For readers who never met or saw Feynman in person, this is truly a great biography. I read it a few years ago, and I still recommend it to my friends all the time.
-- Ed Lee, Santa Barbara.
Rating:
Summary: This red book is my Good Book (paperback versio is red)
Review: This is the only book I will ever give 5 stars, because reading it is a spiritual experience. It came from my old supervisor's library collection and later I purchased my own copy.
Gleick's conception of physics is quite accurate, and his writing style is sufficiently colourful, that this is one of the few books I always go back for passages. His writing of Feymann, his colleagues, and certain events are almost like reading a novel, adding charm to the otherwise blend perception to the world of science.
More importantly, it is Gleick's portrayal of Feymann as human -- with flaws, feelings, friends and enemies -- than a mystical figure, that makes it wonderful to read as a biography. He made no attempt to glorify his achievements, nor did he praise his talents. This, I find, a very humble gesture.
In fact, this is such an impact to me, when I finished reading this book, I decided to quit work and persue my Ph.D., which I am doing now.
Rating:
Summary: The Formal Feynman, The Scientist...
Review: This text is a outstanding example of James Gleick's work, much like 'Chaos'. It offers a more in depth perspective of Feynman's accomplishments than any other single book on him. It is a great complement to 'Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman', By Richard Feynman himself. Synopsis? A great author and a great subject.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: When I was in graduate school, this book was an inspiration. It remains one of my favorite biographies. Those who criticize Gleick for not understanding the physics have not read his other books, and do not understand his unique approach to science journalism. Like an impressionist painter he gives the 'feeling' of the science, through metaphors and simple examples, and then lets those examples motivate the character and emotional life of his subject. This isn't a book about science, but about the interaction between science and scientist. It actually reaches a crescendo about halfway through, when Gleick offers his personal meditation on genius. Given his more recent biography on Newton, one can see this theme running throughout his works: what is it that elevates the scientific genius from the masses? A true masterpiece.
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