About the Book

Lauren Redniss has created a fascinating and deeply moving visual biography that walks students through the story of Marie Curie's life, which was marked by both extraordinary scientific discover and dramatic personal trauma. From her romantic partnership with Pierre, through his tragic decline from radium poisoning and death in a traffic accident, to the scandalous affair with another fellow scientist that almost jeopardized her second Nobel Prize, it also casts an eye forward to survey the changes wrought by Curie's discovery of radioactivity—illuminating the path from the Curie laboratory past the bright red mushroom clouds in the Nevada desert through Three Mile Island and the advance in radiation therapy and nuclear technology today.

Freshman Common Read: University of Cincinnati, Texas A&M Commerce

Critical Praise

“[An] excellent new book.” — Robert Krulwich, NPR

“[A] sumptuously illustrated visual biography….Radioactive is an incisive look at science’s greatest partnership.” — Vogue

“One of the most beautiful books-as-object that I’ve ever seen.” — Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“[Radioactive is] a deeply unusual and forceful thing to have in your hands. Ms. Redniss’s text is long, literate and supple…Her drawings are both vivid and ethereal…Radioactive is serious science and brisk storytelling. The word ‘luminous’ is a critic’s cliché, to be avoided at all costs, but it fits.” — New York Times

“Radioactive is quite unlike any book I have ever read—part history, part love story, part art work and all parts sheer imaginative genius.” — Malcolm Gladwell

“Absolutely dazzling. Lauren Redniss has created a book that is both vibrant history and a work of art. Like radium itself, Radioactive glows with energy.” — Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

“Radioactive offer innumerable wonders. Colors suddenly bloom into tremendous feeling, history contracts into a pair of elongated figures locked in an embrace, then expands again in an explosive rush of words. In this wholly original book about passion and discovery Lauren Redniss has invented her own unique form.” — Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love

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Product Details

• ISBN: 9780062416162
• ISBN 10: 0062416162
• Imprint: Dey Street Books
• On Sale: 08/04/2015
• Trimsize: 8.000 in (w) x 11.000 in (h) x 0.590 in (d)
• Pages: 208
• List Price: $23.99
• BISAC1 : ART / Prints
• BISAC2 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Historical
• BISAC3 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Science & Technology
• BISAC4 : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women