Freeman Dyson's new collection of pieces from The New York Review of Books investigates and celebrates what he calls openness to crazy ideas in science. His subjects range from the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, to the scientific inquiries of the Romantic generation, to important recent works by Daniel Kahneman and Malcolm Gladwell. He discusses twentieth-century giants of physics such as Richard Feynman, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Paul Dirac, many of whom he knew personally, and explores some of today's most pressing scientific issues, from global warming, to the future of biotechnology, to the flood of information in the digital age. In these essays, Dyson, whom The New York Times Book Review called "one of science's most eloquent interpreters," mixes reminiscences, lucid explanations of scientific concepts, and an engagingly imaginative approach to the triumphs, blunders, mysteries, and dreams of scientific inquiry into the natural world.

Both recalling his life story and recounting many of the major advances in twentieth-century science, a renowned physicist shares his autobiography through letters.While recognizing that quantum mechanics "demands serious attention," Albert Einstein in 1926 admonished fellow physicist Max Born that the theory "does not bring us closer to the secrets of the Old One." Aware that "there are deep mysteries that Nature intends to keep for herself," Freeman Dyson, the 94-year-old theoretical physicist, has nonetheless chronicled the stories of those who were engaged in solving some of the most challenging quandaries of twentieth-century physics. Written between 1940 and the early 1980s, these letters to relatives form an historic account of modern science and its greatest players, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and Hans Bethe. Whether reflecting on the horrors of World War II, the moral dilemmas of nuclear development, the challenges of the...