I think “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” is a “must read” book for any technical person who reads not so technical books time to time. It is just fascinating.

The book was particularly interesting to read for me as I work on a project for the IAEA. My project helps to identify any misuse of nuclear materials to prevent creation of nuclear weapons, and here is the guy who describes how the Manhattan project looked from the inside. Of course, the book doesn’t go too much into details but you get the idea on the atmosphere of the project of the first nuclear bomb.

The book starts with Feynman’s early years when he was fixing some broken radio devices and performing experiments in his “lab”. This reminded me about the years when I was winning school competitions in physics and chemistry and also had some kind of a “lab” at home. I did some similar things. You know, blew few things, assembled a radio, broke few other things… Eh, that was a special time. So the book grasped me from the very beginning.

It is actually hard to believe that one person could have had so many of adventures in one life. Apart from serious things there are tons of short stories on learning other languages, trying art and samba music and even picking up girls. When you read all these stories it is like if your friend was telling his or her most compelling story. You listen with pleasure.

There are topics that make you develop a more critical mind, a more questionable one. For example, critiques of education system in Brazil and school book publishing business in US. I started to think that a lot of studying that I took could have been much better.

I don’t know how, but somehow “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” got to my list of technical books to read this year. Obviously it isn’t technical one, but it is for technical people to have a good reading time. I highly recommend it.