The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era

by Craig Nelson

Overview

“A thrilling, intense, and disturbing account of the atomic era, from the discovery of X-rays to the tragic meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant…Rich with powerful images and fraught with drama” (The Christian Science Monitor).

When Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, and Edward Teller forged the science of radioactivity, they began a revolution that ran from the nineteenth century through the course of World War II and the Cold War to our current confrontation with the dangers of nuclear power and proliferation. While nuclear science improves our lives, radiation’s invisible powers can trigger cancer and cellular mayhem. Writing with a biographer’s passion, New York Times bestselling author Craig Nelson unlocks one of the great mysteries of the universe.

In The Age of Radiance, Nelson illuminates a pageant of fascinating historical figures: Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Curtis LeMay, John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Ronald Reagan, and Mikhail Gorbachev, among others. He reveals how Jewish scientists fleeing Hitler transformed America from a nation that created light bulbs into one that split atoms; Alfred Nobel’s dream of global peace; and how, in our time, emergency workers and utility employees fought to contain life-threatening nuclear reactors. By tracing our complicated relationship with the dangerous energy we unleashed, Nelson discusses 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. “This is the kind of book that doesn’t just inform you but leaves you feeling smarter.” (The Dallas Morning News).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781451660449
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	12/30/2014
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Craig Nelson is the author of Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness and the New York Times bestseller, Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon, as well as several previous books, including The Age of Radiance (a PEN Award Finalist chosen as one of the year’s best books by NBC News, the American Institute of Physics, Kirkus Reviews, and FlavorWire), The First Heroes, Thomas Paine (winner of the Henry Adams Prize), and Let’s Get Lost (shortlisted for W.H. Smith’s Book of the Year). His 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.

Table of Contents

Part 1 The Old World

1 Radiation: What's in It for Me? 3

2 The Astonished Owner of a New and Mysterious Power 8

3 Rome: November 10, 1938 55

4 The Mysteries of Budapest 73

Part 2 The New World

5 The Birth of Radiance 109

6 The Secret of All Secrets 140

7 The First Cry of a Newborn World 196

8 My God, What Have We Done? 206

Part 3 World's End

9 How Do You Keep a Cold War Cold? 225

10 A Totally Different Scheme, and It Will Change the Course of History 247

11 The Origins of Modern Swimwear 270

12 The Delicate Balance of Terror 276

Part 4 Power and Cataclysm

13 Too Cheap to Meter 303

14 There Fell a Great Star from Heaven, Burning as It Were a Lamp 312

15 Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet 327

16 On the Shores of Fortunate Island 340

17 Under the Thrall of a Two-Faced God 368

Heartfelt Thanks 381

Notes 383

Sources 399

Photo Credits 417

Index 419

Editorial Reviews

"A book that moves at a thrilling pace through the while history of the atomic age... this ambitious book does achieve is goal, presenting a grand and very readable overview of the nuclear era."

Wall Street Journal

"This is the kind of book that doesn’t just inform you but leaves you feeling smarter."

Dallas Morning News

"A highly readable history of humanity’s embrace of nuclear energy and radiation."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Wow! Craig Nelson’s The Age of Radiance is like the best of John McPhee mixed with the page-turning glory of a science-fiction thriller. A magnificent storyteller, Nelson takes even the most atomized of details and spins a dazzling history of the Atomic Age. This book gives you x-ray glasses: After reading it you literally can’t walk down the street without seeing everything in our world anew.

Doug Stanton

"Nelson's vivid reconstructions...shine. They make this book fun to read and sometimes hard to put down.'"

On the Seawall

"A comprehensive and fascinating look at the invention of atomic energy...The pleasure of reading this book comes from the many, many insights and facts that are brought to light through Nelson’s smart voice."

Flavorwire

A fascinating, information-rich new work… Filled with drama, vivid anecdotes, and breathtaking scientific breakthroughs, this book is an engrossing, comprehensive history of the atomic age.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Nelson writes a wonderfully detailed, anecdote-filled account of atomic energy.… Other authors have covered the myriad ways this invisible power impacts our lives, but Nelson brilliantly weaves a plethora of material into one noteworthy volume.

Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

As he did with the space program in Rocket Men, in The Age of Radiance Craig Nelson has brought an era and an ethos to life. At the same time, he’s performed an even more difficult task: he’s made both the scientific and political complexities of the atomic era comprehensible and transparent.

Daniel Okrent

"Rich with powerful images ... fraught with drama ... and moments of great pathos ... a thrilling, intense, and disturbing account of the scientific and sociopolitical history of the atomic era."

Christian Science Monitor

A sweeping panorama of the nuclear age, paying particular attention to the colorful scientists whose brilliance and diligence unlocked the secrets of the atom.… Nelson tells their stories vividly, with a journalist’s eye for symmetry and irony.

Booklist

"Nelson is especially good with a 'you are there' approach in describing Curie’s work and her late-night visits to the backyard lab with husband Pierre to look at the glow from her experiments stored in jars."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A page-turning history... Historian Craig Nelson tells the tale with exceptional panache… an example of top-notch storytelling… Nelson’s version is one of the best, an ideal balance of detail, character, conflict and information.

Salon

Nelson writes a wonderfully detailed, anecdote-filled account of atomic energy.… Other authors have covered the myriad ways this invisible power impacts our lives, but Nelson brilliantly weaves a plethora of material into one noteworthy volume.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Nelson writes a wonderfully detailed, anecdote-filled account of atomic energy.… Other authors have covered the myriad ways this invisible power impacts our lives, but Nelson brilliantly weaves a plethora of material into one noteworthy volume.

Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

A sweeping panorama of the nuclear age, paying particular attention to the colorful scientists whose brilliance and diligence unlocked the secrets of the atom.… Nelson tells their stories vividly, with a journalist’s eye for symmetry and irony.

Booklist

"A highly readable history of humanity’s embrace of nuclear energy and radiation."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"A book that moves at a thrilling pace through the while history of the atomic age... this ambitious book does achieve is goal, presenting a grand and very readable overview of the nuclear era."

Wall Street Journal

★ 12/16/2013
The atomic age arrived with a bang in 1945, terrifying the world with the threat of nuclear holocaust while offering the possibility of a cheap source of energy. Yet neither scenario followed and the era petered out with the century’s end, as the digital age was ushered in. Nelson (Rocket Men) writes a wonderfully detailed, anecdote-filled account of atomic energy, from Wilhelm Roentgen’s 1895 discovery of radiation to the ongoing hangover of the Fukushima disaster. Roentgen’s fateful discovery opens this account and is followed in turn by four more geniuses—Pierre and Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard—as well as the colleagues who helped them tease out details of a hitherto unknown but spectacular source of energy. Hardly anyone believed in its practicality until Hitler expelled the cream of Europe’s physicists and claimed that those remaining were working on an atomic bomb. America embarked on an immense project to beat the Nazis at their own game before becoming entangled with Soviet nuclear program in the bizarre, abysmally wasteful Cold War. Other authors have covered the myriad ways this invisible power impacts our lives, but Nelson brilliantly weaves a plethora of material into one noteworthy volume. Agent: Stuart Krichevsky. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"A dramatic history, full of missteps and accidental discoveries, manipulations and malfeasance, outsized personalities and egos, and inadvertent deaths born of ignorance as well as human error...A readable and fresh romp through a familiar history.

Los Angeles Times

10/01/2013
Having breached the New York Times best sellers list with Rocket Boys, former publishing exec Nelson here works through the portraiture of significant figures from Marie and Pierre Curie and Robert Oppenheimer to Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan to chronicle the atomic age. Certainly relevant; with a five-city tour to Denver, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC.

Library Journal

★ 2014-02-10
Nelson (Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon, 2009, etc.) returns with a survey of mankind's use of radioactive materials. Beginning with the discovery of X-rays in 1895 and ending with the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the author examines the discovery of radium (used for a while in everything from watches to toothpaste), the development of nuclear fission and fusion, and the use of the resulting new elements in nuclear weapons, medicine and power generation. Nelson's coverage of the science underlying this saga is admirably thorough and accessible, but this is no impersonal "march of science" story. The author also shows how the development of nuclear physics was deeply influenced by contemporary politics and the interplay of the personalities involved. He includes lively biographies of the men—Wilhelm Roentgen, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and others—who created this new age and of two remarkable women: the celebrated Polish-born Marie Curie and the almost forgotten Austrian Lise Meitner. Nelson characterizes nuclear science as a "two-faced god," a blessing and a curse, and its history as irrational, confusing and conflicted. For example, nuclear weapons are so dreadful that they have effectively prevented war between superpowers, but their production and maintenance have been a staggering waste of resources. The author's gripping narratives of the meltdowns at Chernobyl and Fukushima simply scream that fallible humans should not be messing around with this technology, and yet he argues that nuclear power is still the safest and best option for environmentally responsible power generation. Nevertheless, Nelson contends that the nuclear era is now drawing to a close, as the acquisition of nuclear weapons is viewed only as the mark of a pariah regime, and the dishonesty of governments and industry has ruined the prospects for further development of nuclear power. An engaging history that raises provocative questions about the future of nuclear science.

Kirkus Reviews