Feynman Lectures on Physics

I read these over and over back in the early seventies when they first came out. (Later I listened to the lectures on audio-tape and was astonished at the difference. Jack (is it?) did one hell of a job editing them. He wasn't quite as spot on when he edited the 25th Anniversary edition recently and fixed it up so there were 100 inches to the yard...)

You'll need to do some math homework to handle volume III, but the first two are pretty straightforward if you found high-school physics reasonable.

There's nothing of string theory in here - but I think there's a spreading suspicion that there's nothing to string theory anywhere. These Lectures hold up remarkably well.