Amazon.com (ISBN 0670872458, Hardcover)

Richard Feynman was something of a rarity: a science superstar. Like another superstar who preceded him, Albert Einstein, Feynman's science was ahead of his time, but it was his qualities as a human being that caught the imaginations of ordinary people. A whole body of legend has grown up around the man--much of it promulgated by Feynman himself--and nearly 10 years after his death he remains a popular subject of memoirs, biographies, and even films. In Richard Feynman, respected science writers John and Mary Gribbins combine biography with popular science in this absorbing look at the great man's life and work.

Though there's little new information about Feynman's personal life and interests here--everything from his passion for bongo drums to his fascination with the country of Tuva has been documented many times and in many places before now--the Gribbons do an exemplary job of explaining just why Feyman was such a giant among physicists. Quanatum theory is the kind of subject that could give the average reader a raging headache, yet the Gribbons explain it so well that by the end of Richard Feynman even the most non-scientific among us will be able to appreciate just what a singular contribution to our world this science superstar made.