Presents a psychobiographical analysis of 14 individuals who rose to the top of their professions and changed the world, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Helena Rubenstein, Edith Piaf, Nikola Tesla, and Amelia Earhart. Their stories reveal that factors such as emulation of great people, manic behavior, rebellion, and mythological hero mentors are important for success. Includes bandw photos. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

To his colleagues, Richard Feynman was not so much a genius as he was a full-blown magician: someone who “does things that nobody else could do and that seem completely unexpected.” The path he cleared for twentieth-century physics led from the making of the atomic bomb to a Nobel Prize-winning theory of quantam electrodynamics to his devastating exposé of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. At the same time, the ebullient Feynman established a reputation as an eccentric showman, a master safe cracker and bongo player, and a wizard of seduction. Now James Gleick, author of the bestselling Chaos, unravels teh dense skein of Feynman‘s thought as well as the paradoxes of his character in a biography—which was nominated for a National Book Award—of outstanding lucidity and compassion.

Introduction: on the writing of history.--Frederick, the Great.--Baron vom Stein.--Bismarck.-- Stanley.--Peters.--Rhodes.--Wilson.-- Rathenau.--Lenin.--Leonardo da Vinci.--Shakespeare.--Rembrandt's self-portrait.--Voltaire in eighteen tableaux.--Lord Byron and Lassalle.--Goethe and Schiller.--Dehmel.--Balzac.--Portrait of an officer [Karl Gangolph von Sendler].