This version of the book has been reviewed in English(7) by readers.
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What are readers saying about Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character?
| Reviews of Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character - Page 1 of 1 | «1»
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A reader posted a review at 2009-10-03 22:13:23.
(Language: English)
 
Just finished reading. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes physics, funny anecdotes, or both.
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A reader posted a review at 2009-07-03 18:15:31.
(Language: English)
aw. i forgot i owned this book. how i miss it!!
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A reader posted a review at 2008-08-20 00:33:44.
(Language: English)
Amazingly entertaining, informative, and SMART! Feynman is one of those few creatures worthy to be called a genius.
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A reader posted a review at 2008-06-06 22:24:10.
(Language: English)
Great sampler and the included CD was the clincher for me getting this book. You really do need to hear him tell his tales first-hand to appreciate the man.
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A reader posted a review at 2008-01-23 23:16:15.
(Language: English)
must read.period.
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A reader posted a review at 2008-01-05 15:02:40.
(Language: English)
If nothing else, buy this book to listen to the CD that comes with it..."Los Alamos From Below," a 1975 talk by Feynman at UC Santa Barbara. Great stuff! He discusses his experiences at Los Alamos including battles over censorship, safe cracking, as well as a bunch of other stuff related to his work on the bomb. Classic Feynman indeed...very funny!
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A reader posted a review at 2007-11-17 11:52:58.
(Language: English)
Richard P. Feynman is a Nobel-prize-winning physicist. I can't understand physics, or rather, I thought I couldn't. Physics was the only D I got in college. I took it to fulfill my math requirements, thinking it’d be easier and more interesting than taking an actual math class. I was wrong; it kicked my ass. My freshman physics class was taught by another Nobel-prize-winner. He was enthusiastic about the subject, but talked way, WAY over our heads. He simply couldn’t run backwards far enough in his head to get back down to our level and start somewhere elementary. I sat in class, frustrated to near tears, as he leapt around balls rolling down ramps, drawings of the motion of electrons orbiting nuclei, enthusiastically shouting about amazing new discoveries. I didn’t doubt there was something amazing going on, but I didn’t have the tools to understand what, exactly. So I was wary of this book. It’s just a collection of lectures Feynman gave over the years, and I wasn’t sure it’d be readable. Barely four pages into it, though, I wanted to leap up from my bed and go be a scientist. This is how immediately arresting it is. Feynman uses experiences from his life, experiences anyone might have and can relate to, to illustrate how he developed and used a scientific mind. But he never uses phrases like ‘scientific mind’; his language is simple, conversational, and yet intriguing. The book is largely nothing more than a string of chronological anecdotes. How, as a child, his father quickly drew out what was important to learn, saying, (no doubt my favorite quote) “You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing – that’s what counts.†They go on to form hypotheses about why the bird pecks at his feathers. How, as a teenager, he created little shorcuts and innovations to make things as wildly divergent as arithmetic and chopping vegetables more efficient, and the reprimands he got for that. How he invented languages on the spot, spoke them, and convinced people they were real. How he got hypnotized, and why it sort of worked. How he learned Portuguese and became a frigideira player in Brazil. How he learned to effectively crack the supposedly most secure safes possible while he was working on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. The book is chronological, so though he never makes any retrospective analysis of his life, we can see it unfold before us. Personal stories intersperse with stories about new scientific discoveries – that’s how life actually goes. We are able to see what he drew from, and the difficulties he had in getting there. He makes no qualms about being honest about hitting brick walls sometimes, and feeling uninspired other times. He doesn’t pretend that he was an amazing scientist all the time. In fact, the part about his winning the Nobel Prize is easily the most awkward part of the entire thing. The fact that the tone is conversational throughout doesn’t mean, however, that it doesn’t take massive amounts of concentration to understand some of the things he says. Sometimes, to follow his logic, especially in the hard-science-heavy parts, you have to take every word, roll it around, and make sure it’s steady before moving onto the next word. It is a necessary side effect for laymen trying to understand the technical reasons why the Challenger failed, the materials for building the Bomb and how they go together, etc. Nowhere, however, is it impossible to comprehend, and this is coming from someone who will avoid math, avoid physics, every time. Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about the experience of reading this is the immediate overwhelming desire you get to go out, observe your world, and try out the new and different ways of thinking you just read. Using real-world examples in his lectures not only makes Feynman accessible, but makes him inspirational. His tone implies that anybody could just go outside anytime they wanted and discover experiments just waiting to be performed, patterns just waiting to be observed, people just waiting to be unlocked by conversation into spouting the most intriguing nonsense ever, and that nonsense just waiting to be deciphered. How could anyone be bored in a world like this? he seems to be asking with every story. How could anyone feel there isn’t enough to do? There are very few books that make me feel like that. When I find one, I try my hardest never to forget it. These books, and this one included, are books that could easily save my life.
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