“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”

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What to expect

One of the most famous science books of our time, the phenomenal national bestseller that “buzzes with energy, anecdote and life. It almost makes you want to become a physicist” (Science Digest).

Richard Feynman, one of the world’s greatest theoretical physicists, thrived on adventure. His outrageous exploits once shocked a Princeton dean’s wife to exclaim: “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!”

In this phenomenal national bestseller, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist recounts in his inimitable voice his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums, and much else of an eyebrow-raising and hilarious nature. Woven together with his views on science, Feynman’s life story is a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, eternal skepticism, and raging chutzpah.

Critics Review

  • “A storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain. He proves once again that it is possible to laugh out loud and scratch your head at the same time.”

    New York Times Book Review
  • “Quintessential Feynman—funny, brilliant, bawdy…enormously entertaining.”

    New Yorker
  • “A chain reaction is not a bad analogy for Feynman’s life. From a critical mass of gray matter it goes off in all directions, producing both heat and light.”

    Time
  • “Books like this are temptations—to give up reading and devote life to rereading…The book is as litmus paper: anyone who can read it without laughing out loud is bad crazy.”

    Los Angeles Times Book Review
  • “Buzzes with energy, anecdote, and life. It almost makes you want to become a physicist.”

    Science Digest
  • “Mr. Feynman’s escapades are worthy of being read aloud…Raymond Todd seems to get as much pleasure out of the diversities of Feynman’s career as the scientist did through living them.”

    AudioFile

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