Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
balsam · 2013-05-05
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Most biographies of Feynman are really hagiographies of Feynman, who was no doubt a great showman. Here's a collection of his letters, which, despite revealing some personal flaws, show that he is wiser and more vulnerable than we imagine. Really underrated in my opinion.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465023711/
(The letters to family and Wolfram is also there.)
Another good one, in my opinion, is a rather raw portrait made from the vantage point of a student towards the end of Feynman's life. It's the unvarnished details that reveal the ordinariness and greatness of that physicist dude.
http://www.amazon.com/Feynmans-Rainbow-Search-Physics-Vintag...
I think Feynman really believed that anybody could become as (wise? accomplished? happy?) as he, and I think most books don't do justice to that dream of his, by making him out to be some kind of trickster god.
Minor spoiler alert.
Feynman had a strong dislike for string theory, even going so far as to shout at someone "I don't want to talk about string theory!" Presumably, Feynman could sense that this kind of "search for beauty" was against empiricism. I always found it interesting that even back then, when empirical observation seemed to rein supreme, there were those who eschewed it and searched for meaning beyond what nature presents to us.