steve_sanders 's review for:

The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey Into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor by John McPhee

4.0

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A masterful portrait of fascinating figure, Ted Taylor, a man who elevated bomb-making to an art form and saw the dangers that lay ahead (its chilling how often “leveling the World Trade Center” seems to have been used as the benchmark of destructive power as early as 1973). McPhee vividly illustrates the power and pitfalls of atomic energy both in terms of it’s potential for violence and catastrophe, but also in the ways in which it manipulates the very glue that holds the universe together (the binding energy of the book’s title). The crisis of nuclear power is fundamentally a crisis about humankind’s place in that universe.

I only hold off on giving it five stars because, despite McPhee’s best efforts, much of the scientific detail was simply impenetrable to me. The fault there lies with me as a reader much more than McPhee as a writer. Still it had an undeniable impact on my reading experience as I imagine it will for others.