author : Leonard Mlodinow

Some might wonder if this rather slim book is cashing in on the Feynman mystique. Mlodinow was a young scientist at Caltech in the early 1980s, unsure of himself, who met and spoke with Feynman. He recorded some of the conversations, and reproduces fragments here. But this book is more than simply a bunch of transcripts -- they actually form only a minor part of the whole. It is actually Mlodinow's journey of discovery, to find how one should live one's life, as helped by Feynman, and by some of the other characters at Caltech. What that message is, as articulated by a man who has an autobiography called What Do YOU Care What Other People Think?, is unsurprising -- but it is a journey worth travelling with Mlodinow.