Review: Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Feynman has been a personal hero of mine for more than a decade now. The more I learn about him, the more my admiration grows. His steadfast belief about how Science should really be done, the exacting standards he had for himself and his courage place him in a league of his own. His ability to arrive at B from A in an inexplicable manner used to baffle even the smartest of his peers. He was truly a wizard. In the words of the mathematician Mark Kac, who had the privilege of watching Feynman at Cornell,

"There are two kinds of geniuses, the “ordinary” and the “magicians.” An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they have done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark. They seldom, if ever, have students because they cannot be emulated and it must be terribly frustrating for a brilliant young mind to cope with the mysterious ways in which the magician’s mind works. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber."

He had this sense of clarity - the ability to sift through a matter and break it down into its essential components, discarding the superfluous. He could thus identify the crux of a matter, and this ability definitely served him well through out his life, from his work in the Manhattan Project, to his last major contribution as a scientist, the investigation of the Challenger disaster.

His contempt for ceremony, for pretentious behavior and ostentatious customs is also testament to the same fanatically honest, no-nonsense character he was. During his lifetime, not only did he pursue Science brilliantly, but he also learned to play the bongo, crack safes, train dogs, speak portugese in a few months, be the conceptual father of nanotechnology, make a minor contribution to the field of biology and write 6 books. What an incredibly talented man he was.

Genius, by James Gleick, is not just about Feynman however. In a way, it is also a story of the Physics of that era, the era Feynman grew up. The books get quite technical at times, and if you have no inkling of Physics whatsoever, you will be at a loss. That being said, it is still a brilliantly spun yarn about one the most brilliant men the world has known.

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Review: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, is part memoir and part candid account of the restaurant business in America. Well, not the entire United States, but rather the parts the late Mr. Bourdain fraternized in. It is a no holes barred account of his evolution into a tall, handsome celebrity chef from a gangly, entitled kid - the many adventures (some very distasteful ones) he had, the incredible characters he met and the first hand account of what really goes on behind the scenes in a typical restaurant.

The book is very easy to read. You feel like the author is narrating the story to you directly. And if you are familiar with his voice, the imaginary narration is in his voice. Mr. Bourdain definitely had a flair for the written word apart from his culinary skills.

The book is quite fascinating to the individual interested in the culinary world. Even if you have a passing interest in how food actually gets to your table in any restaurant, you would be fascinated by how hard the business is and how certain unsavory practices take place behind the kitchen.

One of the most interesting things I learned was the striking similarity between a well run kitchen headed by an ass kicking chef and an army unit. The chef expects nothing less than a soldierly obedience from his staff, especially his line cooks. The staff need to be really tough - capable of handling abuse and withstanding pressure. The manner in which the kitchen must handle a growing stream of customers on a busy night in a restaurant with a 20 page menu is reminiscent of a soldiering unit defending their position in a steadfast manner against the onslaught of a ravenous enemy, no pun intended. As a student of business, the grim accounts of failures in the restaurant world reminded me of the Startup scene of today. If you remove the technology part, the struggles of a restaurant and the success rate in the Industry reminded me of the typical challenges of a tech start-up.

I have decided to read other books by the author, my appetite whetted by this one. I have been Anthony Bourdain's fan for a few hours, having watched No Reservations, A Cooks tour and Parts Unknown. It was quite a shock to learn of his demise, that too through a suicide. It felt like a personal loss. Reading this book was a nice way of remembering who he was and what he stood for. May his soul rest in peace.



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