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    The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era
    The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era
    The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era
    Audiobook14 hours

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

    Written by Craig Nelson

    Narrated by George Newbern

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    About this audiobook

    “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).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMar 25, 2014
    ISBN9781442370128
    Author

    Craig Nelson

    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.

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    Reviews for The Age of Radiance

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      Good book, but the narrator needs to reduce his coffee intake to more like 60-70 cups a day as opposed to the 350-700 he's drinking at the moment.

      Even reduced to 80% speed the narration was too fast.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      ARC provided by NetGalleyIt is no easy feat to write a readable, and somewhat enjoyable, overview of the atomic age thus far. Particularly as it is a somewhat convoluted, and at times terrifying, history. And yet, Nelson has crafted such a tale, albeit it with some errors. If you’re looking for a good scientific overview, with accurate details, then this is not the book for you as Nelson has errors and some editorial decisions used to create drama vs. reality. But the book does a good job of outlining how we began the atomic age and how we’ve gotten to where we are now in it, in a manner that is readable for the average person so that they don’t need a degree in nuclear physics to make it through the tome. He does a good job of explaining radiation, how it occurs, and how it isn’t quite as rare and obscure as we so often believe. Overall it’s a fun book, despite being a bit light on science sometimes. 3 out of 5 stars.