This book and others in this series written by me are inspired by the memory of my son Suresh who left this world soon after completing school. Suresh and I often used to discuss physics. It was then that I introduced him to the celebrated Feynman Lectures.
Hans Bethe has described Feynman as the most original scientist of this century. To that perhaps may be added the statement that Feynman was also the most scintillating teacher of physics in this century.
The Feynman Lectures are great but they are at the textbook level and meant for serious reading. It seemed to me that there was scope for small books on diverse topics in physics which would stimulate interest, making at least some of the young students take up later a serious study of physics and reach for the Feynman as well as the Landau classics.
Small books inevitably remind me of Gamow's famous volumes. They were wonderful, and stimulated me to no small extent. Times have changed, physics has grown and we clearly need other books, though written in the same spirit.