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Radioactive: Marie And Pierre Curie, A Tale Of Love And Fallout (2010)

by Lauren Redniss(Favorite Author)

3.96 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0061351326 (ISBN13: 9780061351327)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

It Books

review 1: This book is exceptionally beautiful, from its writing to its artwork to its layout, and deserves six stars. The story of Marie Curie's research and lovers is highly compelling and masterfully interwoven from culled diary and lab note entries. One paramour, Paul Langevin, turns out to have a fascinating biography, having scaled the Eiffel Tower, challenged multiple journalists to duels over their publicizing his affair with Curie, and was the first French professor to be arrested by the Nazis. I'll never see the fractional Generalized Langevin equation the same way again! But what this book really achieves is successfully telling the life story and profound legacy of the brilliant Marie Curie in a highly stylized and mesmerizing way, and what more could one want from a... more book on the topic? Nada.
review 2: I truly enjoyed this book, because I myself have often tried to reconcile my admiration for the science and scientists behind nuclear physics with my revulsion at its use for weapons and the devastation it has wreaked even in peaceful applications. Redniss poetically pulls back the curtains on the dusty, static images of the Curies and reveals their shared lives of love and devotion: to each other, to their science, to discovery. This is a love story, or rather, several love stories, told against a backdrop of destruction and decay. In telling the stories of the Curies as well as outlining the misadventures of their most unruly child: nuclear science, Redniss explores the contradiction inherent in atomic history. Despite the violent and greedy ends to which atomic science has been applied, the means itself was born from a place of true love. less

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