embingham 's review for:

The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor by Ken Silverstein

3.0

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This was an interesting history of nuclear energy and of the character who became known as "the radioactive boy scout." I have 2 complaints with the book. First, David Hahn (the radioactive boy scout,) annoyed me to no end. He has the strength of being very determined to accomplish his task of building a nuclear reactor, but he fails in every other aspect of life. He is a lying, cheating, thieving, lazy, dangerous individual who has convinced himself that he is better than everyone around him. He is not representative of what a boy scout should be, and really the boy scout thing was just a cover up so that he would have an excuse to do whatever he wanted. The second issue I have with the book is that the author has a definite axe to grind. It is very clear throughout this book that the author is opposed to nuclear energy and boy scouts, so I'm not sure why he chose this topic to write about. When I was able to overlook the authors politics, and the subjects idiocy, I actually did enjoy reading the book.