A thoughtful companion volume to the earlier Surely You Are Joking Mr. Feynman!. Perhaps the most intriguing parts of the book are the behind-the-scenes descriptions of science and policy colliding in the presidential commission to determine the cause of the Challenger space shuttle explosion; and the scientific sleuthing behind his famously elegant O-ring-in-ice-water demonstration. Not as rollicking as his other memoirs, but in some ways more profound.


From Publishers Weekly
Roughly half of these 21 short, colloquial essays deal with Feynman's firsthand investigaton of the Challenger space-shuttle disaster. He casts himself in the role of intrepid detective, and the first-person singular pronoun keeps intruding on the worthwhile things he has to say about flight safety and lack of communication within NASA. An appendix offers his chilling technical observations on the shuttle's reliability or lack of it. The remaining pieces are mostly a blur of international conferences, purveying slight anecdotes. But two essays touch genuine depths of feeling: his tribute to his father, who taught him to cultivate a sense of wonder, and his account of his love affair with his first wife (who died). In this posthumous miscellany, theoretical physicist Feynman displays only sporadically the adventurousness that captivated readers of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Following the success of the late Nobel laureate's first commercial book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (1984), this second was perhaps an inevitability. The book has problems, but it is worthwhile nonetheless. In general, the new anecdotes lack the wit, novelty, and outrageousness of those in the earlier work. The book's second half is the high point; it is topical, entertaining, and illuminating, and telells of Feynman's work on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Readers who bypass the first part, which is rife with unconnected tales, will be happy to find this in their libraries. Gregg Sapp, Idaho State Univ. Lib., BoiseCopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Washington Post
By the evidence of this book alone, it is clear that he was an original, brilliant, curious, energetic, eclectic, ebullient, gregarious, and consummately iconoclastic human being with a passion for science, a taste for first principles, and a view of reality that was uniquely his. When he discusses what he really loved, his natural genius shines through.


James Gleick, The New York Times Book Review
Feynman's voice echoes raw and direct through these pages.


Book Description
The best-selling sequel to "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"--funny, poignant, instructive. One of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century, Richard Feynman possessed an unquenchable thirst for adventure and an unparalleled ability to tell the stories of his life. "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" is Feynman's last literary legacy, which he prepared as he struggled with cancer. Among its many tales--some funny, others intensely moving--we meet Feynman's first wife, Arlene, who taught him of love's irreducible mystery as she lay dying in a hospital bed while he worked nearby on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. We are also given a fascinating narrative of the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger's explosion in 1986, and we relive the moment when Feynman revealed the disaster's cause by an elegant experiment: dropping a ring of rubber into a glass of cold water and pulling it out, misshapen. A New York Times bestseller.


Book Info
A sequel to Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! A collection of stories and anecdotes from the world famous physicist and author, a memoir of his life and work. Details events such as the heartbreaking story of what he learned from his first wife on her deathbed, and his explanation of what caused the explosion of the space shuttle, Challenger, in 1986. Softcover. DLC: Feynman, Richard Phillips.

ANNOTATION

This companion volume to "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" includes a remarkable behind the scenes account of the space shuttle Challenger investigation.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics, died in February 1988 after a courageous battle with cancer, the New York Times called him "the most brilliant, iconoclastic, and influential of the postwar generation of theoretical physicists." Here, in these "further adventures," a companion volume to "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!," is another healthy dose of Feynman's irreverent zest for life and an even deeper, wiser level of reminiscence. He tells us of his father, who taught him to think, and of his first wife, Arlene, who taught him to love, even as she lay dying. And Feynman takes us behind the scenes of the presidential commission investigating the space shuttle Challenger's explosion and to the dramatic moment when the cause of the disaster was revealed simply and elegantly as Feynman dropped a rubber ring into a glass of ice water and pulled it out, misshapen.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Roughly half of these 21 short, colloquial essays deal with Feynman's firsthand investigaton of the Challenger space-shuttle disaster. He casts himself in the role of intrepid detective, and the first-person singular pronoun keeps intruding on the worthwhile things he has to say about flight safety and lack of communication within NASA. An appendix offers his chilling technical observations on the shuttle's reliability or lack of it. The remaining pieces are mostly a blur of international conferences, purveying slight anecdotes. But two essays touch genuine depths of feeling: his tribute to his father, who taught him to cultivate a sense of wonder, and his account of his love affair with his first wife (who died). In this posthumous miscellany, theoretical physicist Feynman displays only sporadically the adventurousness that captivated readers of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. (October)

Library Journal