Genius

It would be easy to write a biography of Richard Feynman with the kind of manic iconoclasm that marked his life. But that would be a disservice to the significant contributions of this Nobel laureate physicist. The same goes for the reading of the audiobook. To deliver it with bombast would be unfair to both the book and the man. Dick Estell offers a steady reading in this reissued production. He varies his pacing well, adding speed when he reads some of the nearly stream-of-consciousness descriptions of Feynman by others and by Feynman about himself. He declines to differentiate individual speakers, but this matters little as the author always makes clear who is speaking. The book offers solid scientific history as well as biography, and Estell's evenhanded reading makes it easy to comprehend. R.C.G. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine