New York Times Bestseller: This life story of the quirky  physicist is “a thorough and masterful portrait of one of the great  minds of the century” (The New York Review of Books). Raised  in Depression-era Rockaway Beach, physicist Richard Feynman was  irreverent, eccentric, and childishly enthusiastic—a new kind of  scientist in a field that was in its infancy. His quick mastery of  quantum mechanics earned him a place at Los Alamos working on the  Manhattan Project under J. Robert Oppenheimer, where the giddy young man  held his own among the nation’s greatest minds. There, Feynman turned  theory into practice, culminating in the Trinity test, on July 16, 1945,  when the Atomic Age was born. He was only twenty-seven. And he was just  getting started. In this sweeping biography, James Gleick captures the  forceful personality of a great man, integrating Feynman’s work and life  in a way that is accessible to laymen and fascinating for the  scientists who follow in his footsteps.