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Richard Feynman won a Nobel Prize, cracked safes at Los Alamos, played drums in a samba band and worked out on live television why the Challenger came apart. What he almost never did was sit down and write a book. Around twenty titles carry his name, and nearly every one of them was assembled by somebody else out of a taped lecture course, a week of conversation, or a box of letters. This page has all of them, what each one actually is, who put it together, and which to read first.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 books in full · Nonfiction · 1961–2005 · Updated September 2026
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Quick answer
Around twenty books carry Richard Feynman’s name, published between 1961 and 2005, and he wrote almost none of them as books. He lectured, he talked, he answered letters, and other people — two colleagues, a drumming partner, his daughter — turned that into print, most of it after he died. Which is why the number you get depends on what you are willing to call a book by him. What each one is, and who assembled it → If you have never read him, start with Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985).
Where to Start with Richard Feynman
If you have never read him
→ Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985). The anecdotes, in his talking voice, no physics required.
If you want the mind rather than the man
→ The Character of Physical Law (1965). Seven short lectures on what a law of nature is. The BBC recordings are online, so you can watch him give them.
If you want to understand what he actually won the Nobel for
→ QED (1985). His own work, explained without mathematics, by him.
If you are studying physics
→ The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964–1966), free in full from Caltech. Buy the paper copies if you are going to live in them.
If physics is not the point for you
→ The Meaning of It All (1999) on doubt and society, or Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (2005), his letters. My best essays to read list goes further in the same direction.
If you only have an hour
→ The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999) and read one piece. It is built for that.
All 10 Richard Feynman Books, in Order
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
The introductory physics course Feynman taught at Caltech between 1961 and 1963, transcribed and edited into three volumes by his colleagues Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands. Volume one covers mechanics, radiation and heat; volume two electromagnetism and matter; volume three quantum mechanics. Feynman lectured; the book exists because two other people did the work of turning a room full of blackboards into print. Caltech has published the full text online for free since 2013.
The most famous physics textbook in the world, and the one people are most likely to own and least likely to finish. It assumes a first-year physics student who is keeping up. If that is not you, the two Pieces selections below are the same material, chosen for readers.
— LisanneThe Character of Physical Law
Seven lectures given at Cornell University in 1964 as the Messenger Lectures, recorded by the BBC and published as a book the following year. Feynman is not teaching you to calculate anything here; he is arguing about what a law of nature is, why mathematics turns out to describe the world, and why the same principle keeps showing up in unrelated places. MIT Press has kept it in print, and Cornell put the BBC recordings online in 2015.
If you want to know what the fuss about Feynman is and you do not want to be taught physics, this is the shortest route. Seven lectures, no equations you have to follow, and you can watch the man give them while you read.
— LisanneSurely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Subtitled Adventures of a Curious Character. Not written but talked: Ralph Leighton, who drummed with Feynman, taped their conversations for years and edited the anecdotes into a book. Safecracking at Los Alamos, learning to draw, picking up Portuguese in Brazil, the Nobel Prize as an inconvenience. It became an unlikely bestseller and is the reason most people know his name.
The entry point, and the book that made him a character rather than a physicist. Worth knowing before you start: these are stories he told about himself, polished by retelling, and a few of them have not aged well.
— LisanneQED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
Four lectures given at UCLA in 1983 as the Alix G. Mautner Memorial Lecture series, after an earlier version at the University of Auckland in 1979. Quantum electrodynamics — the work he shared the Nobel Prize for — explained with arrows and stopwatches instead of mathematics. Mautner was a friend who had asked him for years to explain what he actually did.
The one book where he explains his own Nobel work to someone who is not a physicist, and he does not cheat to do it. Slower going than the memoirs, but it is the closest thing to sitting in the room.
— LisanneWhat Do You Care What Other People Think?
The second volume of taped anecdotes, published the year he died, and a very different book from the first. It opens with his first wife Arline, who died of tuberculosis in 1945 while he was at Los Alamos, and the title is a phrase of hers. The second half is his account of the Rogers Commission into the 1986 Challenger disaster, including the appendix he insisted on publishing, which ends: “reality must take precedence over public relations.”
People buy it for more of the first book and get something harder. The Arline chapters and the Challenger appendix are the two pieces of writing that complicate the cheerful-trickster version of him.
— LisanneSix Easy Pieces
Subtitled Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher. Six chapters lifted out of The Feynman Lectures on Physics — atoms, basic physics, the relation of physics to other sciences, conservation of energy, gravitation and quantum behaviour — chosen because they need the least mathematics. No new writing; a reading path through a book most people bounce off.
The honest answer to “should I buy the Feynman Lectures?” for most readers. Start here, and if these six chapters carry you, the three volumes are waiting.
— LisanneSix Not-So-Easy Pieces
Subtitled Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry and Space-Time. The companion volume, and the title is not modesty: these six chapters, also from the Lectures, cover symmetry, special relativity, space-time and curved space, and they expect you to follow the mathematics rather than admire it.
Buy it after the easy six, not instead of them. This is where the course stops being a popular-science book and starts being a physics course again.
— LisanneThe Meaning of It All
Subtitled Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist. Three lectures given at the University of Washington in 1963 under the John Danz endowment, unpublished for thirty-five years. Feynman on uncertainty as a method, on religion, and on how a society that has learned to doubt should handle politics and unreason. Almost no physics in it.
The Feynman book for people who are not interested in physics at all. It is also the one most likely to annoy you, which is the point of it.
— LisanneThe Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Subtitled The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman. Interviews, talks and essays collected after his death, including the 1959 talk “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, which is routinely called the starting point of nanotechnology, and his Nobel lecture.
The best single place to see the range: the same voice doing a television interview, a technical talk and a graduation speech. Good for reading in pieces rather than straight through.
— LisannePerfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track
His letters, selected and annotated by his daughter Michelle, from Los Alamos in the 1940s to the last years at Caltech. Letters to his mother, to strangers who wrote to him, to students, to people asking him to lend his name to things. Published in Britain as Don’t You Have Time to Think?
The only book here where you get Feynman writing rather than talking, and the difference is the whole interest of it. He is more careful on paper, and more patient with people than the anecdotes suggest.
— LisanneThe Full Feynman Bibliography, by Form
Twenty-one titles, grouped by what they actually are rather than by date, because the date a Feynman book was published often has little to do with when he said any of it. Dates and publishers follow the bibliography on richardfeynman.com, the estate’s official site.
Open a form to see the titles.
Memoirs, letters and collections
6
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! 1985
as told to Ralph Leighton · W. W. Norton
What Do You Care What Other People Think? 1988
as told to Ralph Leighton · W. W. Norton
No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman 1996
edited by Christopher Sykes · W. W. Norton
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out 1999
edited by Jeffrey Robbins · Perseus Books
Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character 2005
edited by Ralph Leighton · W. W. Norton
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track 2005
edited by Michelle Feynman · Basic Books
Lectures turned into books
6
The Feynman Lectures on Physics 1964–1966
with Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands · Addison-Wesley
The Character of Physical Law 1965
the 1964 Messenger Lectures, Cornell
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter 1985
the 1983 Mautner Lectures, UCLA · Princeton University Press
Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics 1987
the 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures · Cambridge University Press
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun 1997
Vintage
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
The Meaning of It All 1999
the 1963 John Danz Lectures · Perseus
Selections from the Lectures
3
Six Easy Pieces 1994
Perseus Books
Six Not-So-Easy Pieces 1997
Addison-Wesley
Feynman's Tips on Physics 2005
with Michael A. Gottlieb and Ralph Leighton · Addison-Wesley
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Technical books and textbooks
6
Theory of Fundamental Processes 1961
Addison-Wesley
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Quantum Electrodynamics 1962
Addison-Wesley
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals 1965
with Albert R. Hibbs · McGraw-Hill
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Statistical Mechanics: A Set of Lectures 1972
W. A. Benjamin
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Lectures on Gravitation 1995
edited by Brian Hatfield · Addison-Wesley Longman
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Feynman Lectures on Computation 2000
edited by Tony Hey and Robin W. Allen · Perseus
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Quick facts about Richard Feynman
- Born
- 11 May 1918, Queens, New York
- Died
- 15 February 1988, Los Angeles, aged 69
- Education
- MIT, bachelor’s degree 1939; Princeton, PhD 1942
- Doctoral thesis
- “The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics”, supervised by John Archibald Wheeler
- Taught at
- Cornell 1945–1951, then Caltech from 1952 until his death
- Nobel Prize
- Physics, 1965, shared with Julian Schwinger and Shin’ichirō Tomonaga
- Citation
- “for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics”
- Known for
- Feynman diagrams, the path integral formulation, the parton model
- Manhattan Project
- Los Alamos, group leader in Hans Bethe’s Theoretical Division
- Challenger
- Member of the Rogers Commission, 1986
- Other awards
- Albert Einstein Award 1954, Lawrence Award 1962, Oersted Medal 1972, National Medal of Science 1979
- Books
- Around twenty carry his name; he sat down to write almost none of them
- Best-known book
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)
- The famous course
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964–1966), free in full from Caltech
- His Nobel work, for readers
- QED (1985), his own explanation without mathematics
- Published after his death
- Eleven of the twenty-one titles, including The Meaning of It All
Watch: Feynman on the BBC, 1983
Why Almost None of the Feynman Books Were Written by Feynman
Line up his bibliography and a pattern shows up that does not show up for most authors. The Feynman Lectures on Physics is a course he taught, transcribed by Robert Leighton and Matthew Sands. The Character of Physical Law is seven lectures the BBC recorded at Cornell. QED is four lectures at UCLA, edited by Ralph Leighton. The Meaning of It All is three lectures at the University of Washington that sat unpublished for thirty-five years. Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces are chapters cut out of the course. Both memoirs are Ralph Leighton’s tapes. The letters were selected by his daughter.
The exceptions are the technical books, and even those are mostly lecture notes: Statistical Mechanics is subtitled A Set of Lectures, and Lectures on Gravitation and Feynman Lectures on Computation say it in the title.
This matters for a practical reason. When a book is a transcript, the voice survives and the structure does not. Feynman is wonderful company on the page precisely because nobody smoothed him into an author — he interrupts himself, he takes the long way round, he tells you when something bores him. But you should not expect an argument built across three hundred pages, because he never sat down to build one. The books are shaped like evenings, not like books.
It also explains the chronology. Eleven of the twenty-one titles below were published after his death in 1988, and their publication dates tell you when an editor got to the material, not when Feynman thought the thought. The Meaning of It All is dated 1999 and was spoken in 1963.
Frequently asked questions about Richard Feynman’s books
How many books did Richard Feynman write?
It depends entirely on what you count. Feynman sat down and wrote almost nothing that became a book. Around twenty titles carry his name, and nearly all of them were assembled by other people from a taped lecture course, a lecture series, years of recorded conversation, or a box of letters. If you count only the volumes you can buy with his name on the spine, the answer is about twenty; if you count books he wrote as books, it is close to none.
What are Richard Feynman's books in order?
Theory of Fundamental Processes (1961), Quantum Electrodynamics (1962), The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964–1966), The Character of Physical Law (1965), Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals (1965), Statistical Mechanics (1972), Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985), QED (1985), Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics (1987), What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988), Six Easy Pieces (1994), Lectures on Gravitation (1995), No Ordinary Genius (1996), Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (1997), Feynman’s Lost Lecture (1997), The Meaning of It All (1999), The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999), Feynman Lectures on Computation (2000), Classic Feynman (2005), Feynman’s Tips on Physics (2005) and Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (2005).
Which Feynman book should I read first?
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985) if you want the man, and The Character of Physical Law (1965) if you want the mind. Both are short. Neither assumes you know any physics, and you can read them in either order.
Did Feynman actually write Surely You're Joking?
Not in the usual sense. The book is credited “as told to Ralph Leighton”. Leighton, who drummed with Feynman, taped their conversations over several years and edited the stories into chapters. The voice is Feynman’s because the words were spoken by him, but the book was put together by someone else.
Who was Richard Feynman?
An American theoretical physicist, born 11 May 1918 in Queens, New York, and died 15 February 1988 in Los Angeles. He worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, taught at Cornell and then at Caltech from 1952, shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, and served on the commission that investigated the Challenger disaster in 1986.
What did Richard Feynman win the Nobel Prize for?
The 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Julian Schwinger and Shin’ichirō Tomonaga, “for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics”. The three had independently solved the same problem by different routes. QED (1985) is Feynman explaining that work to a general audience.
What are the Feynman Lectures on Physics?
The introductory physics course Feynman taught at Caltech between 1961 and 1963, transcribed and edited into three volumes by Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands and published between 1964 and 1966. Caltech has made the full text freely available online since 2013.
Do I need to know physics to read QED?
No mathematics, but some patience. Feynman replaces the equations with a picture of little arrows that you have to hold in your head for four chapters. Readers who give it an hour usually finish it; readers who skim usually do not.
What is the difference between Six Easy Pieces and the Feynman Lectures?
Six Easy Pieces is six chapters taken out of The Feynman Lectures on Physics and published separately in 1994. There is no new material in it. It exists because the three-volume course is a physics textbook and those six chapters are not.
What did Feynman do on the Manhattan Project?
He worked at Los Alamos in Hans Bethe’s Theoretical Division and became a group leader, working on the calculation of bomb yield and running the laboratory’s computing group on IBM punched-card machines. He was in his twenties, and he witnessed the Trinity test.
What was Feynman's role in the Challenger investigation?
He served on the Rogers Commission in 1986 and demonstrated on camera that the shuttle’s O-ring material lost its resilience in cold water. He wrote a separate appendix to the commission’s report, which ends with the line “reality must take precedence over public relations”. That account is the second half of What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Did Feynman write about anything other than physics?
Yes. The Meaning of It All (1999) is three lectures on doubt, religion and politics with almost no physics in them. Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (2005) is his correspondence. And both memoirs are mostly about drawing, drumming, lock-picking, Brazil and getting away with things.
When did Richard Feynman die?
On 15 February 1988 in Los Angeles, aged 69, of complications from cancer he had been treated for over several years. What Do You Care What Other People Think? was published that same year.
Is there a good biography of Feynman?
The standard one is Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick (1992). It is not on this page because this page lists books by Feynman, not about him.
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Footnotes
- Popular books — richardfeynman.com, the official site
- Textbooks and lectures — richardfeynman.com
- Richard Feynman — Wikipedia
- The Character of Physical Law — Wikipedia
- QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter — Wikipedia
- Richard P. Feynman, Biographical — NobelPrize.org
- Richard Feynman — Britannica
- 1983: Richard Feynman’s physics puzzles, Fun To Imagine — BBC Archive
Bibliography last verified 19 September 2026. Where the estate’s official site and other catalogues give different years for the same title, the official site is followed here.
Nothing here was suggested by a machine.
I read these myself,
and the reasons are on the page.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Reality must take precedence over public relations.”
— Richard Feynman, closing line of his appendix to the Rogers Commission report on the Challenger disaster, 1986
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