..and both books were written by him for the purpose of glorifying himself.

Personally, my feeling is that if you have as much insight and intelligence as he did - not as a writer particularly but as a physicist - then you're entitled to as big an ego as you want. (Impersonally, of course, I think he was supremely egotistical and self-obsessed.)

For another (and more balanced) assessment of this amazingly versatile, fascinating, multifaceted person I unhesitatingly recommend Feynman , the biography by James Gleick.


Edit: Correction -- that's Genius, by James Gleick. Thanks, ff.