blog/content/reviews/books/genius-the-life-and-science-of-richard-feynman.md

+++
title = "Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick"
date = 2018-10-28
updated = 2021-02-12

[taxonomies]
tags = ["books", "james gleick", "richard feynman", "reviews", "biography",
"history", "stars:2", "published:1992"]
+++

[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98685.Genius):
An illuminating portrayal of Richard Feynman—a giant of twentieth century
physics—from his childhood tinkering with radios, to his vital work on the
Manhattan Project and beyond.

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{{ stars(stars=2) }}

Biographies (even auto-biographies) are not without problems. But it takes a
lot of effort to lose the mark.

Imagine that you're drawing the life time of someone; you can't use a pen with
a thin point, otherwise you'll end up with simple "they did this, they did
that" with dates, which doesn't give the proper understanding and context of
why the subject did this and that. In the same vein, you can't use a pen
larger than a marker, otherwise you'll spend too much time on things that are
not related to the subject.

And this book draw the life of Feynman with a brush.

There is a whole chapter about absolutely nothing but a discussion about what
"genius" mean, which seems more targeted to explain the book title than what
happened to Feynman -- or even if his colleagues and family though he was a
genius, for whatever meaning of the word.

There are other chapters than, instead of focusing of Feynman, focus on other
subjects, in points that do not related to Feynman directly. The last chapter,
focused on the Challenger explosion, in which Feynman was part of the
commission to explain the explosion, talks a lot more about NASA politics than
Feynman.

And, on top of that, the author is very lose with poetic prose instead of
being direct to the point. Also, the lack of a continuous timeline, with the
points moving back and forth through time, makes it hard to understand when
things happen.