You are joking, of course, Mr. Feynman!

Publisher: KoLibri, 2008
By: Richard Feynman
Hardcover, 480 pages.
Book on ozon.ru , books.ru

Recently I saw a very interesting video on Habré in which Richard Feynman talks about nature.
In the same topic, it was recommended to read a simply amazing book - “You are, of course, joking, Mr. Feynman”.
Actually, I would like to talk about it today. Even if you are not a physicist, not a mathematician, not an IT specialist and you just have some free time - look under the cat, I am sure you will like the book. :)

You know, I very rarely see books in which a scientist writes something interesting, understandable and with humor.
There is such a stereotype, if a person is an excellent scientist, then in everyday life it is difficult for him to communicate with others, explain his achievements with simple words, and indeed he is rather unsociable, and his sense of humor is completely absent, since it is incompatible with scientific career. So, this stereotype Feynman completely refutes in his book. It is very easy to read it, and you can understand it without technical education. The more you read, the more you realize that this clever scientist, who, by the way, is one of the creators of the atomic bomb, is also a hooligan, bully and mischievous. Naturally, in a positive sense.

When I first learned about this book, I was very skeptical about it, thinking that there can be nothing interesting in a physics autobiography. How much I was wrong ... Anyway, why physics? This man showed himself in many areas, in completely different directions, and in everything, so that he would not undertake, he achieved success. Who was he? I'm afraid I don’t cover everything described in the book, but as far as I remember, he showed himself as a musician (playing the drum), a cracker (cracking safes), an artist (drawing portraits), a chemist, was fond of psychology, philosophy, and also a mathematician and physicist ( received the Nobel Prize and Einstein Prize).
')
And all of this is written in the book, but not in the form of a boring biography of the type “born, studied, married” ... No. The whole book consists of fascinating stories told by Feynman himself, in which you can learn about his life from youth to old age. Despite the artistic character, the book is very useful, so if you want to read interesting literature with benefit, I recommend.

As proof of utility, I’ll quote one from the book, maybe someone already knows this algorithm, but I didn’t know and I really liked it:

When I was in Los Alamos, I discovered that Hans Bethe knows how to count perfectly. For example, once we substituted numbers into a formula and reached the square squaring of the number 48. I reached for the Marchand calculator, he also said: "This is 2300." I begin to press the buttons, and he says: "If you need to know for sure, then the answer is 2304."
The car says 2304. “Class! It's just great! ”I say.
- Do not you know how to put in a square numbers close to 50? - he says. - You square 50, this is 2500, and then you subtract 100 multiplied by the difference of the number you need and 50 (in this case, the difference is 2), it turns out 2300. If you want to get an exact result, raise this difference in a square and add to the result number. So it turns out 2304.

Many thanks to hshrauzer hshhhhh for:
10 volumes with lectures (5th volume, 2 parts) in djvu and 2 books (mht and fb2)
And haterauzeru Eterex for a very interesting site with books and lectures by Feynman .
And also chupvl for video lectures (requires a browser with support for Silverlight, Eng.)