Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

By: Richard P. Feynman

Narrated by: Raymond Todd

Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©1985 by Richard P. Feynman (P)1997 by Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"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)

What an outstanding book

Couldn't stop reading this book. It's been sitting on my night stand for quite a long time and when I started to read it I was amazed at how good it was that I couldn't put it down. If you're at all into science or math or art or...life...this book is a must read. It's about so many different and amazing things happening to this one man, it's really quite a collection of stories.

Hilarious and wonderful!

A curious book by a curious man.
I quite enjoyed it, and deeply wish I could have met him - wow, what a life.

Deeply Funny

Full of hilarious and sometimes outrageous anecdotes, I was laughing out loud throughout each chapter. Feynman, as portrayed in this book, lived the way many of us would like to, but perhaps don't have the guts to.

This book is really about his personal philosophy for life, which is described through personal parables and anecdotes rather than direct specification. Feynman comes across as good natured, brutally honest, and uncommonly curious. These core characteristics take him on many adventures, from safe cracker, to bongo player, to atomic bomb builder.

Eccentric, hilariously honest scientist's musings

The antics of Dr. Feynman are so unbelievable at times that you can't help but pronounce the title words to yourself, in disbelief. Hilarious, insightful, sometimes shockingly uncouth, and always intelligently honest, this collection of anecdotes was a pleasure to read (hear). Looking forward to enjoying another book by Dr. Feynman soon. Highly recommend this one.

Fabulous

A real treasure from one of the greatest scientific minds of his generation. The narrator was perfect and this is the best kind of writing for the audiobook format.

Trust me, you will enjoy it

This book is fascinating and unintentionally hilarious. Narrator was good too. This is coming from a 24yr old recent ASU grad.

Excellent Book!

The book was very good and the performance was awesome. Its made me start looking up video clips of Richard Feynman, he was such an interesting person. Its not very long and I would definitely recommend this book.

I didn't read I ate this book.

More than a book, an life history of the biggest mind of the world.

Just wow!

An absolutely fantastic book. This man is essentially the intelligent Forrest Gump. This is a must read

Loved it!

It was an entertaining read about an extraordinary character. I was astonished by how much one person could accomplish in their life.

My only 2 criticisms were that the book is not in a chronological order (although the structure still makes sense) and that I would have liked to hear more descriptive information about him at the end (e.g. what exactly did he win the Noble's prize for?).

Lastly I wanted to note that you don't need to know anything about physics to enjoy this book.