“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character

Most of the book is about tricks and schemes he played on others. They are interesting and sometimes funny, but it's hard to believe that he was a serious Nobel physicist.

Very educative and inspiring book.

5 stars for the content and as he would have said it, stream of consciousness style. One of a kind person with very little regard for “normal” social conventions. A 20th century intellectual and adventurer.3 stars for the rambling and sometimes off focus story telling. Found myself speed reading a few sections thinking “ok Feynman get on with it, we get, you’re amazing.”

An amazing book that touches on so many areas, and it’s really just a book of stories from Feynman’s life.Group think, logical fallacies, epistemology, and integrity are just a handful of themes.The best chapters are Judging Books by their Covers, where Feynman realizes what a goat rope the textbook industry is and basically explains indirectly why American kids get a substandard education compared to the rest of the west, and Cargo Cult Science. In that chapter Feynman speaks to the problems of science and its incentives. It explains the climate hysteria without speaking to it. It speaks to the nonsense about structural racism without speaking to it.And it confirmed to me that humans are stupid people exceptionally willing to fool themselves.

I only know Mr. Feynman from using his physics text as a freshman in college in the 1960's. Reading this autobiography gives me what I think is an accurate description of the whole person. He was a genius in the physics, but he also had a wide range of other talents. The book is filled with tales of learning to draw, playing the drums, learning Portugeuse, cracking safes --- and always his love of beautiful women. Don't expect any great writing. I was reading some essays by Joan Didion at the same time, so his pedestrian prose was very evident. Nevertheless, the book was one of the most interesting ones I have read in quite a while. There were many "chapters" of just one or two pages which included some random anecdote that made you laugh or made you think. The book is somewhat chronological, but it often skips randomly from here to there. In one chapter he talks about a woman he met in a bar using terms such whores and bitch. A chapter later he is discussing numerical approximations of logarithms. I saw the excellent video: "Richard Feynman - No Ordinary Genius" where he was trying to explain the way he thinks when he solves problems. He tried his best, but ended up saying the process just couldn't be described in words. The sections on the Manhattan Project were especially interesting, giving a glimpse at the other great minds making the first atomic bomb. And then there was the concern for security, which was negated by Feynman's ability to retrieve documents from any safe at Los Alamos or Oak Ridge. Throughout the book I got the impression that he was trying very hard to show himself as a well rounded guy. He did not want to be thought of as living in an ivory tower. Hence we get the stories of drawing nudes in a topless bar near CalTech, playing the tambourine at the Carnaval in Rio and talking to Nick the Greek in Vegas. But in a later chapter he would declare that all other educational disciplines paled in comparison to physics. After reading the book I would say that Mr. Feynman definitey passes my test of "Would I have liked to sit next to this person on an airplane for a few hours?

"Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman" has been on my reading list for a long time, but I never got myself to actually read it. Now I did and I'm glad I did because I found it one of the most funny and insightful books that I've read recently. It's a biography but consisting of short stories of interesting events that happened in the life of Nobel Prize Winner Richard Feynman who seemed to have a special talent of getting himself into interesting situations.The book consist of 5 parts, which are roughly equal to five important periods in Feynman's life. These are: 1) His early pre-university life, 2) His university life, 3) Involvement in the Manhattan project, 4) Early years as a professor, and 5) Later years as a physicist and professor. Each of these parts consist of small chapters that tell a situation (usually funny or weird) in which he got himself and his usually odd reactions in that situation.Throughout the book, there is this honest, smart, jokingly view on life. Feynman did experiments. Not just experiments in physics but experiments in life. He would try out things to see if he could do it or to see how people would react. That attitude of experimenting and learning always got him in weird situations and this book is full of those. Example? As a boy trying to imitate Italian (and getting away with it). Removing doors from classmates and so honestly admitting that he did it that nobody believed him (hilarious!). Pick-locking safes. Playing Brazilian instruments. Doing out to Vegas to hand out with gamblers and show women. Proof reading secondary school science books and actually reading them :)This was one of these books which I found myself laughing out loud quite often. Many of the stories made such an impression that I went off to tell other people about it as they stuck with me (especially the genius experiment with water, a glass and a tip). Everytime when I read more of it, I got more excited about the book and I was actually very sad when I finished the book. It is a book I'll probably re-read (and enjoy as much the second time). It isn't a book about physics or about a specific topic, it is purely a book about Richard Feynman... a curious character... indeed. Five stars, recommended for people who want to read an interesting and fun book.

This book contains unforgettable and hilarious moments during the life of Richard Feynman.It's a lovely book that takes you through the life of the 20th century physicist, which covers many aspects during Feynman's life.It's a great book if you want to learn about the condition's of Los Alamos, or life as a professor at Caltech.

I finally finished the book. It is surprising to know how the mind works, especially a persistent and curious one. To summarize, he just loved physics and pursued it at his whim. It is a good book that reflects the life of a physicist and how simple things always inspire discoveries.

Eğer bilime, şeylerin nasıl olduğuna ve arkasındaki hikayelere meraklıysanız soluksuz okuyabileceğiniz bir kitap. Feynman'ın üslubu her zamanki gibi çok akıcı ve keyifli. Tabii ki fizik, matematik ve analitik düşünmeye olan ilgisini kitabın her yerinde hissediyorsunuz.

Sehr humorvoll erzählt Mister Feynman Erlebnisse aus seinem Leben.Kurzweilig und amüsant.

Siempre es un gusto releer a Feynman y sus increíbles historias y esta vez en inglés.