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The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era
A riveting narrative of the Atomic Age—from x-rays and Marie Curie to the Nevada Test Site and the 2011 meltdown in Japan—written by the prizewinning and bestselling author of Rocket Men .
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rocket Men and the award-winning biographer of Thomas Paine comes the first complete history of the Atomic Age, a brilliant, magisterial account of the men and women who uncovered the secrets of the nucleus, brought its power to America, and ignited the twentieth century.
When Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, and Edward Teller forged the science of radioactivity, they created a revolution that arced from the end of the nineteenth century, through the course of World War II and the Cold War of superpower brinksmanship, to our own twenty-first-century confrontation with the dangers of nuclear power and proliferation—a history of paradox, miracle, and nightmare. While nuclear science improves our everyday lives—from medicine to microwave technology—radiation’s invisible powers can trigger cancer and cellular mayhem. Writing with a biographer’s passion, Craig Nelson unlocks one of the great mysteries of the universe in a work that is tragic, triumphant, and above all, fascinating.
From the discovery of X-rays in the 1890s, through the birth of nuclear power in an abandoned Chicago football stadium, to the bomb builders of Los Alamos and the apocalyptic Dr. Strangelove era, Nelson illuminates a pageant of fascinating historical 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, among others. He reveals how brilliant Jewish scientists fleeing Hitler transformed America from a nation that created lightbulbs and telephones into one that split atoms; how the most grotesque weapon ever invented could realize Alfred Nobel’s lifelong dream of global peace; and how, in our time, emergency workers and low-level utility employees fought to contain run-amok nuclear reactors while wondering if they would live or die.
Radiance defies our common-sense views of nature, with its staggering amounts of energy flowing from seemingly inert rock and matter pulsing in half-lives that transforms into other states over the course of decades or in the blink of an eye. Radiation is as scary a word as cancer, but it’s the power that keeps our planet warm, as well as the force behind earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, and so organic to all life that even our own human bodies are radioactive. By tracing mankind’s complicated relationship with the dangerous energy it discovered and unleashed, Nelson reveals how atomic power and radiation are indivisible from our everyday lives.
Brilliantly told and masterfully crafted, The Age of Radiance provides a new understanding of a misunderstood epoch in history and restores to prominence the forgotten heroes and heroines who have changed all of our lives for better and for worse. It confirms Craig Nelson’s position as one of the most lively and skillful popular historians writing today.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rocket Men and the award-winning biographer of Thomas Paine comes the first complete history of the Atomic Age, a brilliant, magisterial account of the men and women who uncovered the secrets of the nucleus, brought its power to America, and ignited the twentieth century.
When Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, and Edward Teller forged the science of radioactivity, they created a revolution that arced from the end of the nineteenth century, through the course of World War II and the Cold War of superpower brinksmanship, to our own twenty-first-century confrontation with the dangers of nuclear power and proliferation—a history of paradox, miracle, and nightmare. While nuclear science improves our everyday lives—from medicine to microwave technology—radiation’s invisible powers can trigger cancer and cellular mayhem. Writing with a biographer’s passion, Craig Nelson unlocks one of the great mysteries of the universe in a work that is tragic, triumphant, and above all, fascinating.
From the discovery of X-rays in the 1890s, through the birth of nuclear power in an abandoned Chicago football stadium, to the bomb builders of Los Alamos and the apocalyptic Dr. Strangelove era, Nelson illuminates a pageant of fascinating historical 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, among others. He reveals how brilliant Jewish scientists fleeing Hitler transformed America from a nation that created lightbulbs and telephones into one that split atoms; how the most grotesque weapon ever invented could realize Alfred Nobel’s lifelong dream of global peace; and how, in our time, emergency workers and low-level utility employees fought to contain run-amok nuclear reactors while wondering if they would live or die.
Radiance defies our common-sense views of nature, with its staggering amounts of energy flowing from seemingly inert rock and matter pulsing in half-lives that transforms into other states over the course of decades or in the blink of an eye. Radiation is as scary a word as cancer, but it’s the power that keeps our planet warm, as well as the force behind earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, and so organic to all life that even our own human bodies are radioactive. By tracing mankind’s complicated relationship with the dangerous energy it discovered and unleashed, Nelson reveals how atomic power and radiation are indivisible from our everyday lives.
Brilliantly told and masterfully crafted, The Age of Radiance provides a new understanding of a misunderstood epoch in history and restores to prominence the forgotten heroes and heroines who have changed all of our lives for better and for worse. It confirms Craig Nelson’s position as one of the most lively and skillful popular historians writing today.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published March 25, 2014
54 people are currently reading
1337 people want to read
About the author
Craig Nelson
13 books19 followersCRAIG NELSON is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Rocket Men, as well as several previous books, including V is for Victory, Pearl Harbor, The Age of Radiance (a finalist for the PEN Award), The First Heroes, Thomas Paine (winner of the Henry Adams Prize), and Let’s Get Lost (short-listed for W.H. Smith’s Book of the Year).
His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Soldier of Fortune, Salon, National Geographic, The New England Review, Popular Science, California Quarterly, Blender, Semiotext(e), Reader’s Digest, and a host of other publications; he has been profiled in Variety, Interview, Publishers Weekly, and Time Out.
Before turning to writing, Nelson was vice president and executive editor of Harper & Row, Hyperion, and Random House, where he oversaw the publishing of twenty national bestsellers and worked with such authors as John Lennon, Andy Warhol, Lily Tomlin, Philip Glass, Rita Mae Brown, Steve Wozniak, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Alex Trebek, William Shatner, the Rolling Stones, Orson Welles, Robert Evans, David Lynch, Roseanne Barr, and Barry Williams.
He is a graduate of UT Austin, and attended the USC Film School, the UCLA writing program, and the Harvard-Radcliffe publishing course. He turned to writing full-time in 2002.
As a historian he is known for epic moments in the American experience — Pearl Harbor; the race to the Moon; the nation’s founding; and the nuclear era — that are both engrossingly page-turning and distinguished for their scholarship. Massively researched from scratch, his books are eye-opening and definitive accounts of the profound moments that made us who we are today.
Craig lives in an 1867 department store in Greenwich Village.
His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Soldier of Fortune, Salon, National Geographic, The New England Review, Popular Science, California Quarterly, Blender, Semiotext(e), Reader’s Digest, and a host of other publications; he has been profiled in Variety, Interview, Publishers Weekly, and Time Out.
Before turning to writing, Nelson was vice president and executive editor of Harper & Row, Hyperion, and Random House, where he oversaw the publishing of twenty national bestsellers and worked with such authors as John Lennon, Andy Warhol, Lily Tomlin, Philip Glass, Rita Mae Brown, Steve Wozniak, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Alex Trebek, William Shatner, the Rolling Stones, Orson Welles, Robert Evans, David Lynch, Roseanne Barr, and Barry Williams.
He is a graduate of UT Austin, and attended the USC Film School, the UCLA writing program, and the Harvard-Radcliffe publishing course. He turned to writing full-time in 2002.
As a historian he is known for epic moments in the American experience — Pearl Harbor; the race to the Moon; the nation’s founding; and the nuclear era — that are both engrossingly page-turning and distinguished for their scholarship. Massively researched from scratch, his books are eye-opening and definitive accounts of the profound moments that made us who we are today.
Craig lives in an 1867 department store in Greenwich Village.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
July 23, 2014
If you are looking for a historical scientific book, look elsewhere. This book stumbles through the early history of scientists and experiments (with lots of trivial side notes about what they all thought about each other and trivial details of their families), and then attempts to show how the cold war was a waste of time and money, then moves on to the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima in order to show that we really can't handle this genie out of the bottle, and finally wraps up with a few words on medical uses of radiation. Although this book tries to seem like it is painting a balanced picture, I thought it had too strong an agenda to be enjoyable. Some of the facts regarding the Fukushima accident were new to me, but most was rehashing history told better by other authors.
March 25, 2021
"Physicist James Mahaffey: “As they say in nuclear engineering circles, if the first use of gasoline had been to make napalm, we’d all be driving electric cars now.” Nuclear’s invisible powers, mythic history, and scientific mysteries add up to inspire in the general public a belief in magic—black magic. Reactors are exotic and strange...
...When it comes to the science of radiance, Mettler said, “Children in the United States are inundated with all kinds of nonsense on television from the time they are six months old.” Today, especially in the United States, nuclear is synonymous with evil. From Meryl Streep, scrubbed raw and naked and then murdered in Silkwood, to supernaturally incompetent Homer working for the villainous owner of a nuclear power plant on The Simpsons, atomic power is ominous and ever threatening..."
The Age of Radiance was an in-depth and informative look at the nuclear age. Written in an easily-digestible format, the book is not exceedingly technical, and should be acessible to even those not overly familiar with nuclear physics.
Author Craig Nelson's writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, National Geographic, The New England Review, Popular Science, Reader’s Digest, and a host of other publications.
Craig Nelson:
The Age of Radiance is a chronological look at this Atomic Age, that follows its pivotal events, as well as some of its leading scientists. Wood tells this story; beginning with the discovery of X-rays in the 1890s, to the creation of a fission-powered atomic weapon with the Manhattan Project, to the creation of a fusion-powered "Super" bomb, to the Cold War, MAD and "Dead Hand" , to Three Mile Island, to Chernobyl, to Fukushima, and up to the present day. Among the figures covered here are:
* Marie and Pierre Curie
* Enrico Fermi
* Albert Einstein
* Leo Szilard
* Edward Teller
* Robert Oppenheimer
* John von Neumann
* Klaus Fuchs
I found that the first ~half of this book played out in a slower tempo than that latter ~half. In the first half, Nelson spends quite a bit of time going through the lives of many of the people mentioned above. He spends a bit more time than it was worth here, IMHO - going over otherwise irrelevant and unrelated minute details of these scientists' lives; including quotes from love letters, and other non-relevant personal details.
The pace thankfully picked up in the latter half of the book, when Nelson covers the Manhattan Project and the quest to create a fission bomb. He covers the project, the testing of the first bomb, as well as its infiltration by Soviet spies. Nelson also talks about General MacArthur, the Korean War, and the eventual creation of Teller's "Super" ; a fusion-powered thermonuclear device. The writing was decent here.
Nelson writes that MacArthur had a plan to use 26 nuclear weapons in the Korean War:
Nelson also covers the near-catastrophes of the Cold War here, telling the reader how close the two superpowers came to obliterating each other:
The fear of a nuclear bomb attack during the Cold War lead to a societal-wide fear of nuclear technology. Nelson drops this interesting quote, that talks about the relative safety of nuclear power, and helps put things into perspective:
Physicist James Mahaffey is cited numerous times here by Nelson. Coincidentally, I recently finished his related book: Atomic Adventures: Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder, which was also very good, and that I would recommend to any readers of this review.
In conclusion; I rate The Age of Radiance 3 stars for the slow pace of the first ~half, and 5 stars for the better writing in the second half - for an overall rating of 4 stars.
I would recommend this one to anyone interested.
...When it comes to the science of radiance, Mettler said, “Children in the United States are inundated with all kinds of nonsense on television from the time they are six months old.” Today, especially in the United States, nuclear is synonymous with evil. From Meryl Streep, scrubbed raw and naked and then murdered in Silkwood, to supernaturally incompetent Homer working for the villainous owner of a nuclear power plant on The Simpsons, atomic power is ominous and ever threatening..."
The Age of Radiance was an in-depth and informative look at the nuclear age. Written in an easily-digestible format, the book is not exceedingly technical, and should be acessible to even those not overly familiar with nuclear physics.
Author Craig Nelson's writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, National Geographic, The New England Review, Popular Science, Reader’s Digest, and a host of other publications.
Craig Nelson:
The Age of Radiance is a chronological look at this Atomic Age, that follows its pivotal events, as well as some of its leading scientists. Wood tells this story; beginning with the discovery of X-rays in the 1890s, to the creation of a fission-powered atomic weapon with the Manhattan Project, to the creation of a fusion-powered "Super" bomb, to the Cold War, MAD and "Dead Hand" , to Three Mile Island, to Chernobyl, to Fukushima, and up to the present day. Among the figures covered here are:
* Marie and Pierre Curie
* Enrico Fermi
* Albert Einstein
* Leo Szilard
* Edward Teller
* Robert Oppenheimer
* John von Neumann
* Klaus Fuchs
I found that the first ~half of this book played out in a slower tempo than that latter ~half. In the first half, Nelson spends quite a bit of time going through the lives of many of the people mentioned above. He spends a bit more time than it was worth here, IMHO - going over otherwise irrelevant and unrelated minute details of these scientists' lives; including quotes from love letters, and other non-relevant personal details.
The pace thankfully picked up in the latter half of the book, when Nelson covers the Manhattan Project and the quest to create a fission bomb. He covers the project, the testing of the first bomb, as well as its infiltration by Soviet spies. Nelson also talks about General MacArthur, the Korean War, and the eventual creation of Teller's "Super" ; a fusion-powered thermonuclear device. The writing was decent here.
Nelson writes that MacArthur had a plan to use 26 nuclear weapons in the Korean War:
"In December, MacArthur again requested permission to employ at his discretion twenty-six atomic bombs in a strategy he insisted would end the war in ten days, explaining later, “I would have dropped thirty or so atomic bombs . . . strung across the neck of Manchuria [and] spread behind us—from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea—a belt of radioactive cobalt. . . . It has an active life of between 60 and 120 years.
For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the North. . . . My plan was a cinch...”
Nelson also covers the near-catastrophes of the Cold War here, telling the reader how close the two superpowers came to obliterating each other:
"...Never again would there be a moment when the world came so close to nuclear war. “In my seven years as [defense] secretary, we came within a hair’s breadth of war with the Soviet Union on three separate occasions,” Robert McNamara summarized. “Cold War? It was a Hot War. . . . [In Cuba] we literally looked down the gun barrel into nuclear war. LeMay was saying, ‘Let’s go in, let’s totally destroy Cuba.’ At the end, we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close. Rational individuals . . . came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today. The major lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis is this: the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations. Is it right and proper that today there are seventy-five hundred strategic offensive nuclear warheads, twenty-five hundred are on fifteen-minute alert, to be launched on the decision of one human being? . . . Any military commander who’s honest with himself will admit that he’s made mistakes in the application of military power. He’s killed people . . . unnecessarily . . . through mistakes, through errors of judgment. [But] there is no learning curve with nuclear weapons. You make one mistake, and you’re gonna destroy nations...”
The fear of a nuclear bomb attack during the Cold War lead to a societal-wide fear of nuclear technology. Nelson drops this interesting quote, that talks about the relative safety of nuclear power, and helps put things into perspective:
"For of all the ways we have right now of producing electricity, nuclear is in many ways the least of our worries, so much so that perhaps antinuclear activists should refocus on the far greater menace of coal. Thanks to coal, the skies of China are annually filled with 3.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, and 26 million tons of sulfur dioxide. Political commentator William Saletan: “The sole fatal nuclear power accident of the last forty years, Chernobyl, directly killed thirty-one people. By comparison, Switzerland’s Paul Scherrer Institute calculates that from 1969 to 2000, more than twenty thousand people died in severe accidents in the oil supply chain. More than fifteen thousand people died in severe accidents in the coal supply chain—eleven thousand in China alone. The rate of direct fatalities per unit of energy production is eighteen times worse for oil than it is for nuclear power. Even if you count all the deaths plausibly related to Chernobyl—nine thousand to thirty-three thousand over a seventy-year period—that number is dwarfed by the death rate from burning fossil fuels.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2008 Environmental Outlook calculates that fine-particle outdoor air pollution caused nearly 1 million premature deaths in the year 2000, and 30 percent of this was energy-related. You’d need five hundred Chernobyls to match that level of annual carnage...”
Physicist James Mahaffey is cited numerous times here by Nelson. Coincidentally, I recently finished his related book: Atomic Adventures: Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder, which was also very good, and that I would recommend to any readers of this review.
In conclusion; I rate The Age of Radiance 3 stars for the slow pace of the first ~half, and 5 stars for the better writing in the second half - for an overall rating of 4 stars.
I would recommend this one to anyone interested.
April 16, 2014
Nelson has written a readable overview of the atomic age thus far. Readers not familiar with the story will enjoy the book - it's easy to read and digest, it follows a logical progression, and it engages the reader. Those familiar with the science, however, will bristle. There are errors of minutiae and there are editorial decisions made for drama's sake rather than firm accuracy: I am very familiar with the unit REM but have never seen it defined as 'a measure of the cancerous effects of radiant energy'.
Nelson freely admits his former ignorance concerning radiation. Maybe that is why he refers to its 'mythic' properties though it is well understood by science. I very much like his explanations about how, rather than something rare and obscure, we are quite literally bathed in the stuff and, in fact, are radioactive sources ourselves. I bothers me that he presents statistics as certainties and conjecture as fact. But there is much to like here and he makes no pretense that he writes a physics textbook.
He argues that we are seeing the end of an age. He might be right but I'm not digging any graves quite yet
Nelson freely admits his former ignorance concerning radiation. Maybe that is why he refers to its 'mythic' properties though it is well understood by science. I very much like his explanations about how, rather than something rare and obscure, we are quite literally bathed in the stuff and, in fact, are radioactive sources ourselves. I bothers me that he presents statistics as certainties and conjecture as fact. But there is much to like here and he makes no pretense that he writes a physics textbook.
He argues that we are seeing the end of an age. He might be right but I'm not digging any graves quite yet
June 1, 2017
This is a really great book. Unfortunately, at the end the author spins into a little bit of a political whirlwind, that ends up making very little sense to me. He's pretty balanced up to that point.
Other complaints: He really skips over most of the Cold War and doesn't go into the politics of nuclear weapons design (or tactics/strategy) in as much detail as I would have liked.
However, his treatments of the European pre-Manhattan-Project and North American Manhattan-Project eras are really great. So is his coverage of the early days of radiation research.
Well worth reading for anyone interested in popular histories of nuclear technology.
Other complaints: He really skips over most of the Cold War and doesn't go into the politics of nuclear weapons design (or tactics/strategy) in as much detail as I would have liked.
However, his treatments of the European pre-Manhattan-Project and North American Manhattan-Project eras are really great. So is his coverage of the early days of radiation research.
Well worth reading for anyone interested in popular histories of nuclear technology.
September 12, 2021
Apparently I have been reading this book since 2016, which sounds about right. I went from hardback to avoiding reading the hardback because I wanted to take notes and felt I needed to do it perfectly by learning a new citation software to avoiding that to purchasing the audiobook to ignoring the audiobook because my husband had already read it to finally knocking it out while trying to move across the world.
A readable (but cited) history of the atomic era from the late 1800s to Fukushima, largely divided into 4 sections: discoveries in the heyday of physics, shenanigans in the Curie and Hahn labs surrounding WWII, the development of the atom bomb with a focus on Oak Ridge and Oppy, and major meltdowns focused on 3-Mile, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
4.5 stars, but I guess I should knock it down because I didn't devour it.
A readable (but cited) history of the atomic era from the late 1800s to Fukushima, largely divided into 4 sections: discoveries in the heyday of physics, shenanigans in the Curie and Hahn labs surrounding WWII, the development of the atom bomb with a focus on Oak Ridge and Oppy, and major meltdowns focused on 3-Mile, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
4.5 stars, but I guess I should knock it down because I didn't devour it.
July 20, 2014
Two things I would say will help dictate whether you are likely to enjoy the book “The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era” by Craig Nelson. The first and most obvious is whether you have interest in the subject matter of learning about the sweeping history of the atom, radiation and nuclear weapons, power, and medicine. The second reason is if you like the style of historical writing that is used by author Craig Nelson. The style that Nelson uses and which is not unique to him is to make liberal use of quotes normally from people involved or who lived through the events described. Nelson likes to construct his story with a smaller mixture of his telling of events and then more weighted towards his use of quotes. If you like hearing more directly from the people involved then you will be more inclined to like this book given that is the style it uses.
The book covers a larger span of time than you might imagine for this topic. It covers the discovery of x-Rays in 1895 to the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan in 2011. If you are looking for a heavy dose of science and how exactly things work, that is not what you will find with this book. Nelson gives you a moderate understanding of the scientific principles in play when talking about x-Rays, radiation, the splitting of the atom, nuclear energy and weapons among other topics talked about. While at certain times I wish I had gotten a bit more detailed scientific information than I did get, I can see the balance that Nelson likely had to walk in giving you enough information on the science behind the topics discussed but at the same time not getting bogged down in the details so that it would not become inaccessible to your average reader. In that sense I think Nelson has done a good job of giving you enough of a taste of the scientific underpinnings of the story he is telling to allow you to understand the topics discussed. Nelson also gives you a good idea of the large and varied group of people that you encounter over the course of the history of this topic and the politics and personal stories that are prevalent with in this subject.
If you are looking for a good but not extremely technical look at radiation and nuclear based devices this book is certainly worth a look in my estimation.
The book covers a larger span of time than you might imagine for this topic. It covers the discovery of x-Rays in 1895 to the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan in 2011. If you are looking for a heavy dose of science and how exactly things work, that is not what you will find with this book. Nelson gives you a moderate understanding of the scientific principles in play when talking about x-Rays, radiation, the splitting of the atom, nuclear energy and weapons among other topics talked about. While at certain times I wish I had gotten a bit more detailed scientific information than I did get, I can see the balance that Nelson likely had to walk in giving you enough information on the science behind the topics discussed but at the same time not getting bogged down in the details so that it would not become inaccessible to your average reader. In that sense I think Nelson has done a good job of giving you enough of a taste of the scientific underpinnings of the story he is telling to allow you to understand the topics discussed. Nelson also gives you a good idea of the large and varied group of people that you encounter over the course of the history of this topic and the politics and personal stories that are prevalent with in this subject.
If you are looking for a good but not extremely technical look at radiation and nuclear based devices this book is certainly worth a look in my estimation.
July 26, 2014
I admit that whenever I hear words like "enriched uranium" or "thermonuclear fusion" my eyes glaze over, so a book about atomic energy is probably the last thing I would have thought to find on my reading list. But "The Age of Radiance" is an excellent book that offers a fascinating overview of the history of the atomic age, written so that it's comprehensible even to a non-science person like myself.
In it we find the key players in the foundation of atomic energy, from the beautiful Marie Curie (who knew she was a bit of a red hot mama?) and the brilliant and affable Enrico Fermi to the enigmatic Oppenheimer. As a generation of scientists gradually unlock the power of the atom, the world is at war, and the race is on to use this power to create the first atomic weapon. From Los Alamos and Nagasaki, to the Cold War years and, finally, the reactor disasters of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, Nelson brings the era to life with clarity and the suspense of a thriller. Highly recommended!
In it we find the key players in the foundation of atomic energy, from the beautiful Marie Curie (who knew she was a bit of a red hot mama?) and the brilliant and affable Enrico Fermi to the enigmatic Oppenheimer. As a generation of scientists gradually unlock the power of the atom, the world is at war, and the race is on to use this power to create the first atomic weapon. From Los Alamos and Nagasaki, to the Cold War years and, finally, the reactor disasters of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, Nelson brings the era to life with clarity and the suspense of a thriller. Highly recommended!
May 12, 2014
The Age of Radiance does a much better job of explaining the personalities that went into the discovery of nuclear science. Curie, Meitner, Fermi, Szilárd, Teller, and Oppenheimer all receive more lifelike treatment compared to any other book I've consumed on the topic. Considerable effort it made to straighten out the missing history of Lise Meitner's work in the wake of Otto Hahn and I hope this starts a trend to rehabilitate her legacy.
The chemistry isn't gone into in huge detail but the process is. The day-to-day of what working with radium, thorium, and uranium looked like and how a combination of insight and determination forced nature to yield her secrets.
Wonderful book.
The chemistry isn't gone into in huge detail but the process is. The day-to-day of what working with radium, thorium, and uranium looked like and how a combination of insight and determination forced nature to yield her secrets.
Wonderful book.
December 14, 2017
Skimmed and abandoned. The author's anti-nuclear and anti-American prejudices are obvious, and he twists history into pretzels to fit his preconceptions. This is based on skimming areas that I know pretty well, so take with a grain of salt. But life is short, books are many, and Mr Nelson's opinions are of little or no interest to me.
May 19, 2022
Though I disagree with the author on the future of nuclear power.
July 18, 2014
"Washington's Capitol ... is so vibrant that it would fail the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing conditions for a reactor site." (3)
"'We bought a car, the Flying Tortoise, which we drove back to New York, not without some mechanical difficulties along the way. These did not scare Fermi, who is a good mechanic. Once at a gas station he showed such expertise in repairing the automobile that the owner instantly offered hum a job. And these were depression days.'" (quoting Emilio Segre, 59)
"Robert Oppenheimer understood that, at thirty-eight, is best years as a physicist were behind him, and that as a scientist he was first-rate but not first rank among the giants of his era. If he could not be a genius, the at least he could be a handmaid to genius." (147-8)
"Bohr was so used to having wife Margrethe taking care of his day-to-day needs that his life at Los Alamos alternated between the inspired and the comic. One day he came to work wearing a rope to hold up his pants since he'd forgotten where he'd put his belts." (175)
"'[A]ll Soviet nuclear facilities were designed so they could also produce weapons grade plutonium. ... This was in fact the reason why the facilities did not have the traditional containment shells protecting the public from just this sort of accident; it had a removable lid for ease of fuel change and the production of nuclear weapons. Once the lid blew off, that was the end of containment. So the history of thinking of this as a civilian nuclear disaster is quaint; it was a Cold War-era military nuclear disaster.'" (quoting Richard Rhodes, 316)
"The atomic no-man's-land [around Chernobyl] covered eleven hundred square miles, with a name translated three ways: the Zone of Exclusion. The Zone of Estrangement. The Zone of Alienation." (321)
"For Fukushima, then, the consensus is a 1 percent increase in cancer for TEPCO employees who worked at the site, and an undetectable increase for Daiichi's citizen neighbors. Statistically, the rates of death and injury remain higher for real estate agents and stockbrokers than those for atomic plant workers." (366)
"'You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth.'" (quoting Bohr, 368)
"'We bought a car, the Flying Tortoise, which we drove back to New York, not without some mechanical difficulties along the way. These did not scare Fermi, who is a good mechanic. Once at a gas station he showed such expertise in repairing the automobile that the owner instantly offered hum a job. And these were depression days.'" (quoting Emilio Segre, 59)
"Robert Oppenheimer understood that, at thirty-eight, is best years as a physicist were behind him, and that as a scientist he was first-rate but not first rank among the giants of his era. If he could not be a genius, the at least he could be a handmaid to genius." (147-8)
"Bohr was so used to having wife Margrethe taking care of his day-to-day needs that his life at Los Alamos alternated between the inspired and the comic. One day he came to work wearing a rope to hold up his pants since he'd forgotten where he'd put his belts." (175)
"'[A]ll Soviet nuclear facilities were designed so they could also produce weapons grade plutonium. ... This was in fact the reason why the facilities did not have the traditional containment shells protecting the public from just this sort of accident; it had a removable lid for ease of fuel change and the production of nuclear weapons. Once the lid blew off, that was the end of containment. So the history of thinking of this as a civilian nuclear disaster is quaint; it was a Cold War-era military nuclear disaster.'" (quoting Richard Rhodes, 316)
"The atomic no-man's-land [around Chernobyl] covered eleven hundred square miles, with a name translated three ways: the Zone of Exclusion. The Zone of Estrangement. The Zone of Alienation." (321)
"For Fukushima, then, the consensus is a 1 percent increase in cancer for TEPCO employees who worked at the site, and an undetectable increase for Daiichi's citizen neighbors. Statistically, the rates of death and injury remain higher for real estate agents and stockbrokers than those for atomic plant workers." (366)
"'You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth.'" (quoting Bohr, 368)
June 6, 2014
From the Curies to today's shrinking nuclear arsenal and fading nuclear energy, Nelson describes the rise and fall of nuclear energy. Using a slightly sarcastic tone - which seems right - he describes the discoveries, the spending, the horror and the wonder of nuclear energy. The atomic bomb turns out to be more effective when not used and nuclear energy scares everyone because they think of the bomb. Great writing, very thought provoking.
A couple of observations Nelson makes...
If gasoline started as napalm everyone would be driving electric cars
The US has the strongest military and spends the most for military action yet we haven't won a war since 1945
A couple of observations Nelson makes...
If gasoline started as napalm everyone would be driving electric cars
The US has the strongest military and spends the most for military action yet we haven't won a war since 1945
March 8, 2014
From Marie Curie to the Fukushima disaster, this book packs in tons of characters and facts about the history of nuclear science. The biographies of Curie, Teller (Dr. Strangelove), Fermi, Oppenheimer, etc... were super interesting. It was a bit disturbing to read about the stupidity of various governments and corporations in their handling of nuclear power during the cold war and nuclear disasters like Chernobyl. I was a little intimidated when I won this from a Goodreads giveaway because of the technical subject matter, but it was a smooth, well-written and extremely interesting read.
April 21, 2014
Based on the WSJ review, I was expecting a well organized history of the atomic age. Instead, the book is a study in cognitive dissonance as it vacillates between anti-nuclear screed and anti-hysteria propaganda. Splitting the atom is bad. Radiation exposure is not horrific. Coal is worse than nuclear power plant meltdowns. I grew bored about half way through the book.
December 4, 2017
Splendid! Much more fascinating than I expected...
December 31, 2019
Dnf, too focused on the lives of the nanes involved and not enough on the era
February 17, 2019
Nuclear Studies Book 23:
This book was dense, packed to every margin with details. It’s to the point that it can be overwhelming and isn’t a book that I would want to sit down and read in a day.
This author and this book are pro-Nuclear power. It’s worth noting this first. This bent doesn’t show up until the last quarter of the book but it is clear that he believes Americans should stop believing in silly myths about the dangers of nuclear power and should realize that it’s far safer than they believe. (The author even calls out infamous anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldecott for being an inflamer of these mythic threats, which I admit made me smile.)
The level of detail is what makes this book a valuable read for any person studying the history of nuclear science. There are a ton of historical figures to sort through and I never confused any of them which is all credited to the author. The places where women’s contribution to nuclear science were spotlit were some of my favorites.
However, the detail does drag down the book in places. Perhaps the author used too few chapters and not enough mid-chapter breaks. Sometimes, I’d be in Los Alamos and then in the next sentence, I’d be flung to Russia to survey what the equivalent Russian physicists were doing. There were a number of places like this, where I felt jolted around historically. One of the other reasons I could not give this book five stars was the inconsistent use of block quotations. The author embeds many, many lengthy quotations in long paragraphs. Sometimes there are two different people who are quoted, but these are not separated out. I felt like this made some of the text very clunky when I would lose track of where quotes began and ended.
Overall, the book is a necessary read on my list and much more accessible in length than any of the Richard Rhodes histories. I look forward to comparing it with some of the other nuclear history books I’ll read in the future.
This book was dense, packed to every margin with details. It’s to the point that it can be overwhelming and isn’t a book that I would want to sit down and read in a day.
This author and this book are pro-Nuclear power. It’s worth noting this first. This bent doesn’t show up until the last quarter of the book but it is clear that he believes Americans should stop believing in silly myths about the dangers of nuclear power and should realize that it’s far safer than they believe. (The author even calls out infamous anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldecott for being an inflamer of these mythic threats, which I admit made me smile.)
The level of detail is what makes this book a valuable read for any person studying the history of nuclear science. There are a ton of historical figures to sort through and I never confused any of them which is all credited to the author. The places where women’s contribution to nuclear science were spotlit were some of my favorites.
However, the detail does drag down the book in places. Perhaps the author used too few chapters and not enough mid-chapter breaks. Sometimes, I’d be in Los Alamos and then in the next sentence, I’d be flung to Russia to survey what the equivalent Russian physicists were doing. There were a number of places like this, where I felt jolted around historically. One of the other reasons I could not give this book five stars was the inconsistent use of block quotations. The author embeds many, many lengthy quotations in long paragraphs. Sometimes there are two different people who are quoted, but these are not separated out. I felt like this made some of the text very clunky when I would lose track of where quotes began and ended.
Overall, the book is a necessary read on my list and much more accessible in length than any of the Richard Rhodes histories. I look forward to comparing it with some of the other nuclear history books I’ll read in the future.
June 5, 2020
Despite its intimidating topic, I found this book to be an excellent read, and easy to follow. It starts with Marie Curie and her famous radium discovery, and follows the development of nuclear science, on up until the Fukishima meltdown in 2011. I learned so much from this book, not only about the science of the matter, but also about how it impacted history and society. I learned just how close the Nazis were to discovering nuclear energy, and the efforts of the wise scientists who are credited with withholding the crucial information that impeded Nazi progress. I appreciated that the book acknowledged the difficulties faced by the female scientists, such as Marie Curie's reputation being marred despite her brilliant scientific contributions, or how she was nearly denied her rightful acceptance of the Nobel Prize. I learned how Lise Meitner had her work stolen, and was denied credit for her own world-changing discovery for so many years, and how Marie Curie's daughter was a brilliant scientist in her own right.
This book was informative and detailed, without bogging down in jargon or dry writing. It was enlightening on so many levels, about the development of the atom bomb, how much more testing went on to develop a Super Weapon even bigger than that dropped on Hiroshima, the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union, and how perception of nuclear physics morphed from scientific fascination, to a cure-all for all illness and a public novelty, to a terrifying weapon capable of total genocide in one strike, to a mere comic book fascination that both terrifies and fascinates in its potential, capable of bringing about an apocalypse or a Marvel superhero, yet still having long-term applications for energy and medicine.
I highly recommend this book for anyone wishing to learn about the topic relating to physics or this period of history.
This book was informative and detailed, without bogging down in jargon or dry writing. It was enlightening on so many levels, about the development of the atom bomb, how much more testing went on to develop a Super Weapon even bigger than that dropped on Hiroshima, the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union, and how perception of nuclear physics morphed from scientific fascination, to a cure-all for all illness and a public novelty, to a terrifying weapon capable of total genocide in one strike, to a mere comic book fascination that both terrifies and fascinates in its potential, capable of bringing about an apocalypse or a Marvel superhero, yet still having long-term applications for energy and medicine.
I highly recommend this book for anyone wishing to learn about the topic relating to physics or this period of history.
December 13, 2019
I went into this book without expecting much from it. Actually, that’s not true: I expected to read about a fall from grace with a side helping of moralizing and hand-wringing about the legacy of the nuclear weapons enterprise in the U.S. There was a bit of that, however, I certainly did not expect a lively exposition and retelling of the birth of the “Atomic Age”, replete with heroes like Curie, Bohr, Fermi, and Einstein. Especially, I enjoyed The tragic tale of Lise Meitner.
From this cast of characters, the author delves into some details of the Manhattan Project, as it must, and its products. As others have mentioned, This is not the best treatment of the subject. Much has already been said better by others, namely Rhodes.
However, from there the book took, what was to me, an unexpected turn towards Cold War politics and the struggle by both superpowers on how to live with “The Bomb”. The descriptions of MAD, the Sunday Punch, Decapitation, and the Dead Hand were mostly new and I appreciated this new aspect of the history of nuclear weapons which I hadn’t encountered before.
Naturally, the author then has some exposition on nuclear power, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. This was, for me, the low point. However, the book ends, as it must, with a positive outlook for the future.
Perhaps the deepest lesson to be learned from this story is that our civilization still has much to learn about how to live in a nuclear world. But, I think what will stay with me after having read this book is just how close we came to nuclear war in the 1960s, and also how close we came to complete disarmament in the 1980s.
From this cast of characters, the author delves into some details of the Manhattan Project, as it must, and its products. As others have mentioned, This is not the best treatment of the subject. Much has already been said better by others, namely Rhodes.
However, from there the book took, what was to me, an unexpected turn towards Cold War politics and the struggle by both superpowers on how to live with “The Bomb”. The descriptions of MAD, the Sunday Punch, Decapitation, and the Dead Hand were mostly new and I appreciated this new aspect of the history of nuclear weapons which I hadn’t encountered before.
Naturally, the author then has some exposition on nuclear power, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. This was, for me, the low point. However, the book ends, as it must, with a positive outlook for the future.
Perhaps the deepest lesson to be learned from this story is that our civilization still has much to learn about how to live in a nuclear world. But, I think what will stay with me after having read this book is just how close we came to nuclear war in the 1960s, and also how close we came to complete disarmament in the 1980s.
July 14, 2018
Don't read this book. The historical information about the first half of the 20th century may be correct, though differs in many placed from more reliable sources (e.g., Richard Rhodes Making of the Atomic Bomb). The latter stages are related to Chernobyl and Fukushima, and include innumerable mistakes (and several typos) and exaggerations.
The only nuclear engineer quoted regarding Fukushima is David Lochbaum, the head nuclear engineer at the staunchly ANTInuclear Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS reports are also quoted, as is NRC Chairman Gregory Jazcko, who was later shown to be entirely wrong in his assertion the US Congress the the Unit 4 spent fuel pool was completely dry. All of the anti-nuclear grandstanding is counterbalanced by almost a page detailing the hard facts of the extremely limited cancer rates associated with Chernobyl. De-emphasize the facts and scientific data if they don't fit the narrative you want to spin.
I also enjoyed his implied criticism of Japanese dose standard reported as 250 millisieverts in 5 years as compared to the US standard of 50/year. I can attest to the US standard at least being correctly reported. If you, however, multiply out the US standard to the same 5 year period you get the exact same 250 mSv dose. I can only assume the author was relying on American innummeracy to fail to notice the equivalence of the two standards.
In summary, this is the first book I think I've ever contemplated throwing in the recycling bin instead of taking to the used book store so as to remove it from circulation.
The only nuclear engineer quoted regarding Fukushima is David Lochbaum, the head nuclear engineer at the staunchly ANTInuclear Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS reports are also quoted, as is NRC Chairman Gregory Jazcko, who was later shown to be entirely wrong in his assertion the US Congress the the Unit 4 spent fuel pool was completely dry. All of the anti-nuclear grandstanding is counterbalanced by almost a page detailing the hard facts of the extremely limited cancer rates associated with Chernobyl. De-emphasize the facts and scientific data if they don't fit the narrative you want to spin.
I also enjoyed his implied criticism of Japanese dose standard reported as 250 millisieverts in 5 years as compared to the US standard of 50/year. I can attest to the US standard at least being correctly reported. If you, however, multiply out the US standard to the same 5 year period you get the exact same 250 mSv dose. I can only assume the author was relying on American innummeracy to fail to notice the equivalence of the two standards.
In summary, this is the first book I think I've ever contemplated throwing in the recycling bin instead of taking to the used book store so as to remove it from circulation.
April 2, 2021
This is a great read about nuclear everything, from the initial scientific discoveries to the modern nuclear weapons and power plants that are still in use. I especially really enjoyed reading about the experiments performed by Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, etc. The author doesn't go into too much technical detail which may be a negative for some readers, but it was good for a layperson like me. I have to admit I cried reading the section about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I visited the Hiroshima Peace Museum in 2019 and kept visualizing the artifacts and horrors that those people experienced. It seems like most of us agree now that the bombs were unnecessary (particularly Nagasaki). We have a decommissioned nuclear power plant relatively near where I live, and my understanding is that it was functioning just fine until a botched refurbishment a few years back. I think I'm of two minds about using radioactivity like I think most people are, and this book did a great job of discussing all of its uses and not overly emphasizing one side or the other.
November 17, 2022
The majority of this book deals with the development of the atomic bomb and it’s immediate aftermath. If you’ve read “The making of the atomic bomb” you can basically skip to the last couple chapters that deal with Chernobyl and Fukushima.
The book is comprehensive and covers forgotten scientists who have not received their die either due to misogyny or racism (e.g. Lise Meitner). It also does a good job of painting the political, military and social contexts during this historic period. At times the book drives into too much detail but there are some interesting anecdotes (like the fact that Niels Bohr was a ping ping champion).
The chapter on Fukushima a was confusing with the competing narrative on how bad the impacts of the accident were. I believe the book was published only a year after the accident so I’ll give the author a pass on that one. Overall worth the read if you are curious about nuclear science or the Manhattan project.
The book is comprehensive and covers forgotten scientists who have not received their die either due to misogyny or racism (e.g. Lise Meitner). It also does a good job of painting the political, military and social contexts during this historic period. At times the book drives into too much detail but there are some interesting anecdotes (like the fact that Niels Bohr was a ping ping champion).
The chapter on Fukushima a was confusing with the competing narrative on how bad the impacts of the accident were. I believe the book was published only a year after the accident so I’ll give the author a pass on that one. Overall worth the read if you are curious about nuclear science or the Manhattan project.
February 2, 2020
First part of book was interesting...the remainder not not so much.
The first part discussed the early history of the atomic scientists. The second part focused on the building and employment of the bombs used to end WW2 and then the amazing growth of weapon production. When the author got into the Reagan Administration, he let his liberal thinking get the best of him and it ruined the remainder of the book for me. The book went on to discuss the Fukashima incident that still plagues the Japanese. The part about WW2 didn't reveal anything new - it was a rehash of just about every book written on the subject.
The first part discussed the early history of the atomic scientists. The second part focused on the building and employment of the bombs used to end WW2 and then the amazing growth of weapon production. When the author got into the Reagan Administration, he let his liberal thinking get the best of him and it ruined the remainder of the book for me. The book went on to discuss the Fukashima incident that still plagues the Japanese. The part about WW2 didn't reveal anything new - it was a rehash of just about every book written on the subject.
May 26, 2022
I'll start by saying that this book is very factually dense, it took awhile to plow through it.
Learning about the early discoveries in the nuclear phsyics field was very interesting, followed by the race to harness the atoms destructive power in WW2 and into the Cold War and beyond. I learned a lot, and it was at times quite shocking.
To quote Marie Curie "Now is the time to understand more, so that we fear less", I think that quote could not be more true.
If you're at all interested in the history of the atomic age, pick this book up.
Learning about the early discoveries in the nuclear phsyics field was very interesting, followed by the race to harness the atoms destructive power in WW2 and into the Cold War and beyond. I learned a lot, and it was at times quite shocking.
To quote Marie Curie "Now is the time to understand more, so that we fear less", I think that quote could not be more true.
If you're at all interested in the history of the atomic age, pick this book up.
June 24, 2018
1. I finally have learned who Oppenheimer, Teller, and Fermi are.
2. Fukushima and Chernobyl seemed really bad at the time, but have not had many deaths resulting.
3. Most people don't want any part of nuclear; not weapons, not peacetime uses, not power plants.
4. The story of the radioactive boy scout and his admirer was great.
2. Fukushima and Chernobyl seemed really bad at the time, but have not had many deaths resulting.
3. Most people don't want any part of nuclear; not weapons, not peacetime uses, not power plants.
4. The story of the radioactive boy scout and his admirer was great.
July 8, 2019
A good book that mostly focuses on the development of the atomic bomb; and where it excels the most; other key highlights of the ‘age of radiance’ are covered such as 3 mile Island, Chernobyl and Star Wars.
Book has its weaknesses such as when it delves into Marie Curie’s romances... why?
Book has its weaknesses such as when it delves into Marie Curie’s romances... why?
April 25, 2020
A great book, but I stopped reading it once Nelson kept glossing over the tech iCal aspects of the technology - as interesting as the history of the people is, it's really the technology that interested me and I felt that he only touched it on the surface.
February 6, 2022
Not my first book on the subject and not the most comprehensive but perhaps the best organized and most readable. 5/5 would recommend to anyone who is likewise enamored by the rockstar flyboy nature of the physicists who changed the course of history.
March 4, 2018
Very interesting historical view of the atomic age. A good read.
June 26, 2018
Chock full of history I never imagined...brilliant descriptions of Chernobyl and Fukujima. History the way it ought to be written for the general public.
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