Genius: The Life & Science of Richard Feynman (book of the month July 2004)

[SteveDallas]

Gleick's biography of Newton, which I've also read, has some of the sma eproblems I think... it's not a bad book, but like "Genius", it turns out to be very shallow.

One thing that would explain the bit with Gell-Mann, would be if it really was a kind of unique friendship that Feynman didn't share with anybody else... but if Gleick feels that to be the case, he never really comes right around to it. (And it does seem like Feynman didn't have a lot of close friends.)

Now that I reread it, I've also gotten the feeling there was more to be told about the whole business with Schwinger and the quarks.

Trivia: On the way home from NC (we made it without blowing any tires or hitting any deer this time) I started WITSEC, one of the other books I had suggested (and which I had actually expected to be the winner). This books co-author, Gerald Shur, also grew up in Far Rockaway (though a few years younger than Feynman).