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by maxim khesin.
Original Post: A new Feynman book
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This all happened yesterday, so please rewind your mental clocks. This morning Richard Feynman's daughter, Michelle spoke on NPR about her new book. A friend of mine IMed me about it with a link, and the page contained a bonus: she was doing a book reading tonight at the Lincoln Square B&N.
I had an early introduction to Feynman. While American cultural influences were very much clamped in the USSR, somehow Feynman slipped through. Perhaps it was because he visited Russia. I can think of other reasons, but I think the core of his personality, which was clarity, unpretensiousness and open-mindedness had something to do with it. In any case, the first story I heard about him was the one where he cracked a poorly constructed safe containing some of Manhattan Project's secret documents and left a "Guess who" note. Even as a twelve year old kid I thought that was pretty cool. My second encounter was when I was leaving Russia. My best friend at the time won our school's (which was the Soviet equivalent of the Bronx Science type of school) physics tournament and was awarded a copy of Feynam's QED in Russian. He really wanted me to remember him, and geve me the book as a parting present, which I never forgot. When I got to the States I was exposed to some more of Richard's books, my all-time favorite being "Surely you are joking", which I actually used to read periodically when I was down or stressed out. The book is hilarious, it worked like a charm :). The last Feynman-related event in my life so far was ending up in Far Rockaway, where Feynman grew up. I actually walk past his house every Saturday on the way to "shul" (synagogue). So I pretty much had no choice but to go to the book reading :).
Michelle's new book is actually a collection of Feynman's letters. I like this idea better than of the other Feynman books that I own, simply because I it lets the man to speak for himself, rather than being spoken about by definitely lesser (an sometimes, IMO, jealous) minds. As expected, his letters are very witty and contain nice bits of wisdom about science and life in general.
Michelle's reading was good, I was particularly impressed by her handling of the Q&A, as some of the questions being pretty inane. If anyone is interested the show should come to the c-span book channel in the next couple of weeks and to the c-span.org archives thereafter.
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