The source content for blog.juliobiason.me
You can not select more than 25 topics Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.

118 lines
4.8 KiB

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<!-- Enable responsiveness on mobile devices-->
<!-- viewport-fit=cover is to support iPhone X rounded corners and notch in landscape-->
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1, viewport-fit=cover">
<title>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</title>
<!-- CSS -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/print.css" media="print">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/poole.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/hyde.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=PT+Sans:400,400italic,700|Abril+Fatface">
</head>
<body class=" ">
<div class="sidebar">
<div class="container sidebar-sticky">
<div class="sidebar-about">
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.juliobiason.me"><h1>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</h1></a>
<p class="lead">Old school dev living in a 2.0 dev world</p>
</div>
<ul class="sidebar-nav">
<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="&#x2F;">English</a></li>
<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="&#x2F;pt">Português</a></li>
<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="&#x2F;tags">Tags (EN)</a></li>
<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="&#x2F;pt&#x2F;tags">Tags (PT)</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div class="content container">
<div class="post">
<h1 class="post-title">Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick</h1>
<span class="post-date">
2018-10-28
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/books/">#books</a>
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/james-gleick/">#james gleick</a>
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/richard-feynman/">#richard feynman</a>
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/reviews/">#reviews</a>
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/biography/">#biography</a>
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/history/">#history</a>
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/stars-2/">#stars:2</a>
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/published-1992/">#published:1992</a>
</span>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98685.Genius">GoodReads Summary</a>:
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.</p>
<span id="continue-reading"></span><div>
★★☆☆☆
</div>
<p>Biographies (even auto-biographies) are not without problems. But it takes a
lot of effort to lose the mark.</p>
<p>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 &quot;they did this, they did
that&quot; 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.</p>
<p>And this book draw the life of Feynman with a brush.</p>
<p>There is a whole chapter about absolutely nothing but a discussion about what
&quot;genius&quot; 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>