The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the by Craig Nelson

By Craig Nelson

From the hot York instances bestselling writer of Rocket males and the award-winning biographer of Thomas Paine comes the 1st whole background of the Atomic Age, an excellent, magisterial account of the boys and ladies who exposed the secrets and techniques of the nucleus, introduced its strength to the USA, and ignited the 20th century.

When Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, and Edward Teller cast the technology of radioactivity, they created a revolution that arced from the top of the 19th century, throughout the process international warfare II and the chilly battle of superpower brinksmanship, to our personal twenty-first-century disagreement with the hazards of nuclear strength and proliferation—a background of paradox, miracle, and nightmare. whereas nuclear technology improves our daily lives—from drugs to microwave technology—radiation’s invisible powers can set off melanoma and mobile mayhem. Writing with a biographer’s ardour, Craig Nelson unlocks one of many nice mysteries of the universe in a piece that's tragic, positive, and specially, fascinating.

From the invention of X-rays within the Nineties, throughout the start of nuclear strength in an deserted Chicago soccer stadium, to the bomb developers of Los Alamos and the apocalyptic Dr. Strangelove period, Nelson illuminates a competition of interesting old figures: Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Franklin Roosevelt, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Harry Truman, Curtis LeMay, John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Ronald Reagan, and Mikhail Gorbachev, between others. He unearths how impressive Jewish scientists fleeing Hitler reworked the USA from a country that created lightbulbs and phones into person who cut up atoms; how the main gruesome weapon ever invented may well notice Alfred Nobel’s lifelong dream of world peace; and the way, in our time, emergency employees and low-level application staff fought to include run-amok nuclear reactors whereas pondering in the event that they might reside or die.

Radiance defies our commonsense perspectives of nature, with its astounding quantities of strength flowing from likely inert rock and topic pulsing in half-lives that transforms into different states over the process a long time or within the blink of an eye fixed. Radiation is as frightening a observe as melanoma, yet it’s the facility that retains our planet hot, in addition to the strength in the back of earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, and so natural to all existence that even our personal human our bodies are radioactive. by way of tracing mankind’s complex courting with the harmful strength it came upon and unleashed, Nelson unearths how atomic energy and radiation are indivisible from our daily lives.

Brilliantly advised and masterfully crafted, The Age of Radiance presents a brand new realizing of a misunderstood epoch in background and restores to prominence the forgotten heroes and heroines who've replaced all of our lives for greater and for worse. It confirms Craig Nelson’s place as the most full of life and skillful renowned historians writing today.

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“Nelson writes a superbly designated, anecdote-filled account of atomic power, from Wilhelm Roentgen’s 1895 discovery of radiation to the continued hangover of the Fukushima disaster.… different authors have coated the myriad methods this invisible energy affects our lives, yet Nelson brilliantly weaves a plethora of fabric into one noteworthy volume.” (Publisher’s Weekly (starred review))

“A sweeping landscape of the nuclear age, from Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe, paying specific consciousness to the colourful scientists whose brilliance and diligence unlocked the secrets and techniques of the atom.… Nelson tells their tales vividly, with a journalist’s eye for symmetry and irony; the technology itself is, every now and then, much less critical to his narrative than the fusion-reactions of interacting scientists and executive officials.” (Booklist)

“This isn't any impersonal “march of science” tale. the writer additionally indicates how the improvement of nuclear physics used to be deeply encouraged through modern politics and the interaction of the personalities concerned. a fascinating background that increases provocative questions about the way forward for nuclear science.” (Kirkus (starred review))

“Wow! Craig Nelson’s The Age of Radiance is just like the better of John McPhee combined with the page-turning glory of a science-fiction mystery. an impressive storyteller, Nelson takes even the main atomized of info and spins a stunning heritage of the Atomic Age. This publication offers x-ray glasses: After interpreting it you actually can’t stroll down the road with out seeing every thing in our international anew.” (Doug Stanton, writer of Horse infantrymen and In Harm’s Way)

“As he did with the gap application in Rocket males, within the Age of Radiance Craig Nelson has introduced an period and an ethos to existence. whilst, he’s played a good tougher job: he’s made either the medical and political complexities of the atomic period understandable and transparent.” (Daniel Okrent, writer of final name)