Radioactive

Lauren Redniss' Radioactive is a light biography of Marie Curie, focusing on her love life and scientific discoveries. When I say light, I mean that this book took me about three hours to read, total. It's more of a display book than anything else, with really cool art and nearly self-contained stories on each page. You could easily flip open to any page in this book and start reading without missing too much.

Here are a few examples of pages from the book, which are really cool to look at:




The science isn't very detailed. The author chooses to give a very basic overview of the concepts of radioactivity, nuclear fission, and half-lives. But that didn't really bother me, in part because I just liked looking at the art and in part because I already have a decent understanding of most of the science.

Redniss intersperses the story of Marie Curie with a history of her work through science. She touches on some of the "miracle-cure" radium-based products, the atomic bomb and Chernobyl, advances made in biology using cell tagging.

Overall the book was really pretty to look at. I'll be putting it on my coffee table as soon as I get one.

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