It is an ironic twist of fate that Feynman the iconoclast has become a 20th-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 13 short works is a pleasure to read--the editor has chosen not to correct any of Feynman's grammar or idiosyncratic phraseology. 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 for public as well as academic institutions
-- James Olson; Library Journal 8/1/99, Vol. 124, Issue 13
Other reviews
In one of the selections in this wide-ranging collection of thirteen articles and transcripts from little-known talks and interviews, the late Nobel laureate credits his father with instilling in him a sense of wonder and curiosity about learning. The foreword--by student, friend, and fellow physicist Freeman Dyson (who compares his admiration of Feynman to Ben Jonson's devotion to Shakespeare)--is alone worth the price of the book.
Bookshelf; Dec99/Jan2000, Vol. 108, Issue 10
These dozen easy lectures and interviews are the late Feynman's accessible expositions about his life, about technical topics in computing and physics, and about science's general place in society. Although Feynman was normally an ebullient personality, several of the pieces reveal his pessimism over the deep penetration of society by science: not only was physics beyond the comprehension of the nonmathematical minded, he believed the ability of people to fool themselves was immense, a quotidian example being their belief in astrology, and an exceptional one, NASA's belief that the space shuttle was safe. Hence he was committed to absolute honesty in science, which he impressed on the 1974 graduates of Cal Tech in his commencement speech reprinted here. Other discourses, those recorded for radio interviews or popular magazine articles, show the more upbeat, iconoclastic Feynman, and his 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.
-- Gilbert Taylor; Booklist 9/15/99, Vol. 96, Issue 2, p205