| View Larger Image | Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element | Paperbackby Jeremy Bernstein (Author)
| List Price: | $17.95 | | Price: | $12.21 | | You Save: | $5.74 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Cornell University Press | | Page Count: | 194 Pages | | Publication Date: | March 01, 2009 | | Sales Rank: | 96,242th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
When plutonium was first manufactured at Berkeley in the spring of 1941, there was so little of it that it was not visible to the naked eye. It took a year to accumulate enough so that one could actually see it. Now so much has been produced that we don't know what to do to get rid of it. We have created a monster. The history of plutonium is as strange as the element itself. When scientists began looking for it, they did so simply in the spirit of inquiry, not certain whether there were still spots to fill on the periodic table. But the discovery of fission made it clear that this still-hypothetical element would be more than just a scientific curiosity-it could be the main ingredient of a powerful nuclear weapon. As it turned out, it is good for almost nothing else. Plutonium's nuclear potential put it at the heart of the World War II arms race-the Russians found out about it through espionage, the Germans through independent research, and everybody wanted some. Now it is warehoused around the world-the United States alone possesses about forty-seven metric tons-but it has almost no practical use outside its role in nuclear weaponry. How did the product of scientific curiosity become such a dangerous burden? In his history of this complex and dangerous element, noted physicist Jeremy Bernstein describes the steps that were taken to transform plutonium from a laboratory novelty into the nuclear weapon that destroyed Nagasaki. This is the first book to weave together the many strands of plutonium's story, explaining not only the science but also the people involved. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 16 reviews)
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Great subject...not so great presentation. by J. W. Whaley (Fort Collins, CO USA)  3 Stars
November 01, 2009
This book is both interesting, and very very dry.
While the history and technical data are fascinating - the presentation of the book needs a little help. The effort put into compiling this book cannot be ignored, and is no small feat, so the author should be recognized for the volume of work. The problem I had with it was, over and over, the author would state "....but first I'd like to touch on X topic". Why not just get into that topic? Why have a lengthy explanation about why to go into talking about why to talk about a subject? It reminds me of Alan Greenspan.
This book could have just about been produced as a Gantt/milestone type linear chart - and in that would way would have been FAR easier to understand and correlate events - rather than the disjoined presentation it had. Or at least ADD a Gantt chart to it as a supplemental, that could be very helpful.
I liked it, as I'm a bit of a geek and history wonk; but the presentation detracts from the contents, and limits me to rating it at 3 stars.
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Plutonium and the people around it. by T. Rehfeldt (Northern, WI USA)  4 Stars
October 01, 2009
As with all of his writing this is clear, concise, informative, and entertaining. We get fascinating and personal looks at most the big players in early 20th Century physics. And what we get is fresh. We meet the Curies, Thomson, Szilard, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Zachariesen, Heisenberg, Edward Teller and the list goes on. We get a look at how close Germany came to having an atomic bomb.
The overall story is fascinating, involving, as it does, two hot wars and one cold one. We trace the history of Plutonium from its discovery and isolation to the large surplus in the world today. But the most revealing thing is the descriptions of the personalities involved; the dedicated Curies, the rather arrogant but brilliant Oppenheimer, the contentious and paranoid Teller, and many more. And finally we end up with a readable (for anyone with a modicum of technical understanding) account to the most toxic substance on earth; a substance, which has, but one use.
Perhaps because he usually writes shorter pieces there is a somewhat annoying abundance of phrases such as "we'll get to that later" or "I'll explain in Chapter x". This, I think, is the fault of his editor. Careful editing would have removed all of this discontinuity. If you pay close attention he does link everything up. Despite this one annoyance this is an informative, instructive, and thoughtful book by someone in touch with the major players in the drama. Read it, think about it, act on it.
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Plutonium by Robert L. Chaney  2 Stars
July 18, 2009
The first part of the book deals in details of the periodic table that few would be interested in & less would understand. It gives credit of discovery(ies) to individuals that is questionable, lengthy, and off-subject of the physics. Like "Brotherhood of the Bomb" that goes on, ad nauseam, about the absurd FBI. Or "Omnivores' Dilemma", the first half of the book is very interesting but then the author goes into nonsense of cooking & eating a wild pig. Conclusion: far more significant information could have been given in the book about plutonium; less about questionable individuals. e.g. Giving Ed Teller any credit for the Fusion ("hydrogen") bomb is a common absurdity.
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Completely engrossing! by Susan Mills (Tennessee, USA)  5 Stars
July 15, 2009
This is one of the most technically challenging books I have ever read- the element plutonium never ceases to amaze me- it goes through the complete history of the element, from conception to vaporization, and everything in between- I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in nuclear engineering~
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Fascinating, but some ghostwriting might have helped by D. Hodgson (Cupertino, CA United States) 3 Stars
June 12, 2009
I guess this is Actinides Month, because I picked up both Jeremy Bernstein's "Plutonium: A history Of The World's Most Dangerous Element" and Tom Zoellner's "Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped The World" at the same time. The main attraction for "Plutonium" is simply that much less has been written about it - so little, that this may be the only book (so far) about the element intended for a wide audience.
Jeremy's book (Cornell University Press) reads like a story written by a professor with little writing experience outside of academia so he's kind of out of his element when it comes to spinning a tale and general storycraft. For the most part, the book reads like a collection of very interesting historical bits glued together with a whole lot of digressions, so many that that after a few chapters of this you're dying for a timeline. Additionally, the "plates" referred to are not plates at all (at least in the paperback edition) but ordinary grayscale pictures reproduced in the standard manner, which means that the Periodic Table fails to get the glossy insert status it deserves because you'll end up flipping back and forth to it dozens of times throughout the course of the story.
Despite all the detail presented of weapons manufacture, little is presented regarding the working of breeder reactors, which is half the picture. The author was also surprisingly unaware that Pu (Pu-244) is available in nature as a trace element, so one could say that it's not completely synthetic - just darn close. Points for mentioning the temporary shutdown of the Hanford reactor in Washington due to a lucky strike from a Japanese Fu-Go fire balloon, Hanford's impact on the environment, some empirical opinions (from the Los Alamos scientists themselves) regarding plutonium's toxicity, and that fact that you can actually purchase a few milligrams of this from Oak Ridge if you've got the paperwork!
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