Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

Aug 14, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Elizabeth by: Ceridwen

Shelves: 2011, bio-memoir-diaries-letters, french-francophone, non-fiction, reviewed, romance-with-a-capital-r, talk-nerdy-to-me, victorians-and-wannabes

Another book that cannot, cannot, come to us on a kindle or an iPad. It glows. Literally. I had memories of Nox because of that. Suddenly, when the e-book is being hailed as a possible savior of the publishing industry and I have succumbed to the dreaded devices myself, the art of the book, the places an author or artist may take it, is becoming more important to me.

This book has all the trappings of a pretentious, post-modern, over-intellectualized, artistic boondoggle, made reality when I go...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Ceridwen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Ceridwen by: Rachel

Shelves: grrrrl-power, insomnia, non-fiction, omg-were-all-going-to-die, pomo-a-go-go, we-re-from-france, comics

This book was an absolutely brilliant gift from a friend of mine for my birthday. She heard someone talking about it on the radio and thought, holy hell, who can I give this to? (Or possibly she doesn't cuss so much in her mind.) C'est moi! And I absolutely want to eat the physical book, and the idea behind it. Not only is it a hefty coffee table book with thick, toothy paper and good art direction, but it also glows in the dark. How cool is that? And even though I'm congenitally indisposed towa...more This book was an absolutely brilliant gift from a friend of mine for my birthday. She heard someone talking about it on the radio and thought, holy hell, who can I give this to? (Or possibly she doesn't cuss so much in her mind.) C'est moi! And I absolutely want to eat the physical book, and the idea behind it. Not only is it a hefty coffee table book with thick, toothy paper and good art direction, but it also glows in the dark. How cool is that? And even though I'm congenitally indisposed towards non fiction of any stripe, or biography more specifically, I have sincerely loved science biographies that hinge on a relationship. I have avoided using my kids' names on Goodreads because of some vague sense of unease about it, but I will say now that my son's middle name is Galileo partially due to Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love which had me weeping in a bathroom at the death of Maria Celeste, his eponymous daughter. (Spoiler alert: everyone is dead in biographies about people who lived in the 16th century. Someone should have told me.)

The title is a little wrong here; this is more a social biography of Marie than a taxonomy of her relationship with Pierre. I'm not really complaining about that though, because her relationships with her kids and later lovers (after Pierre's death) are at least as interesting, if not more so. The book has an essayish feel, with lots of quotes and both pictures and illustrations - that being occasionally a problem for me when Redniss would use an illustration of a primary source, and not the source itself. I really, really want to see the original drawing from a Hiroshima survivor in one instance, not the artistic rendering. That was the instance that bothered me the most because I felt like the prettying of the art undercut something essential in that child's testimony, wrapped the rawness of the event in protective artistic cloaking. And it was weird because there were instances where primary sources were reproduced more or less intact - though everything was stylized in some way.

For a story of the personal life of the astonishing Curies - I really have a ton of respect for their brilliance now - the tone is positively arid. Some of this is the post-modernist rendering of their lives. Now, plenty of people make the ward against evil when post-modernism is invoked, so I should probably define my terms. I mean post-modern literature, with its reliance on collage and pastiche to create narrative connectives without narratives. So the explanation of a scientific concept would segue without segue into a digression about underground testing in Nevada, or, as I mentioned before, Hiroshima, and the shift was breakneck. I get what she was doing - drawing this line between concepts imagined by people that then had real, physical, and sometimes deadly consequences for other people - but more than once I wished for more connective tissue between the bones of the argument.

Ultimately, I think the problem might me more the longstanding rancor between science and Modernism - and I nurse the pet theory that post-Modernism is mostly Modernism with Simpsons references, and not a decisively different set of approaches to life, the world, and everything. Modernism has always had an anti-science bent - spiritualists knocking on boards as a ward against the mechanistic mass death of the first world war. Some of this is sophomoric playing in scientific concepts that must by needs be carried in words, and words are emminantly twistable. Dude, did you ever think about how atoms are mostly empty space, and therefore we're just empty space? Whoa. While that's fun for smoking the jay and pontificating, I would like a little more oomph in a connection between Chernobyl's mutant animals - which, just as a collection, is freaking cool to see - and Marie's death by cancer. (Spoiler alert.)

So. This is an absolutely worthy biography of Curie - I kept exclaiming to my husband various facts about her life - and just gorgeous if you like Matisse style figure drawings, which I do - but there is a more here that I longed for, and that more is an emotional more that is strangely belied by the title. Completely worth the hour or so it took to read. I will be having no more daughters to name, but Marie is a solid name, one I would consider. (less)

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Dec 28, 2010 Ken-ichi rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, xmas2010

This is an illustrated biography of Marie and Pierre Curie and an impressionistic exploration of the marks their pioneering research left on the world. As history, I thought it was great. Extensive reliance on primary sources, juxtaposition of the past (Marie's letters, a Russian map of Chernobyl) and the present (a phone interview with a nuclear security expert, collages by a survivor of Hiroshima), and a thorough list of annotated citations all made for a compelling, believable experience. As...more This is an illustrated biography of Marie and Pierre Curie and an impressionistic exploration of the marks their pioneering research left on the world. As history, I thought it was great. Extensive reliance on primary sources, juxtaposition of the past (Marie's letters, a Russian map of Chernobyl) and the present (a phone interview with a nuclear security expert, collages by a survivor of Hiroshima), and a thorough list of annotated citations all made for a compelling, believable experience. As a work of art, the singularity of the work is impressive. Redniss not only created all the visuals and wrote the text, but she also designed the font and, I assume, did all her own typography. It's not comics (no attempts to depict time with sequential images), but this form of illustrated non-fiction is certainly unique and interesting.

That said, I'm not sure what the format contributes to the history, or to Redniss's interpretation. The illustrations are beautiful, ghostly, sad, largely stemming from the luminescent qualities of the cyanotypes and a palette of cool blues, greens, and oranges (radium, as Redniss points out in a colophon, glows faintly blue), all of which contribute to the mystery and melancholy underlying the work and lives of the Curies, but I find the line drawings inappropriately dehumanized. Faces are mostly expressionless, with deeply lined eyes, but otherwise rendered with minimal (even child-like) line work, often resembling some of Picasso sketches. The effect is eerie, and I don't think it illuminates the interaction between the deep passions and equally powerful intellects of the Curies in the way the text does.

Honestly, my favorite portion of the book was the quote from Loie Fuller in the beginning (herself a fascinating person at the edge of art and science), which captures the strange liminal sensation of the time (and of this book), when science's push against the boundaries of mystery was something you could see and touch.

To see, to feel, to smell, to hear, to taste, these are the only invisible facts—but which we acknowledge are real—the sensations of horror that kills, of grief that prostrates, joy that uplifts, and faith that cures—what if these things can be registered and seen apart from the body, are they not then material things? And may they not indicate that other invisible materials exist—which are in reality material if we had the human capacity for observing them?... Perhaps Radium and its sister elements may one day help us here. We may not believe, but we do not know that we should not believe!

Also, check out this glowing (apologies) review in the Times.(less)

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Aug 04, 2011 Alicen added it

I loved this book for the sheer fact that when I put it down the other night and turned off the lights it GLOWED. A beautiful book in its genre-bending (is it a biography? A graph novel?) that I highly recommend (although I will note for those who know a lot about Marie Curie's life already it might be a tad boring).

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Mar 18, 2011 Courtney Johnston rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: big-ideas-made-accessible, biography, extraordinary, history, own, science

It seems absurd to try to talk about this book without you being able to see it. It is easy enough to describe the story Lauren Redniss tells in this graphic biography, but hard to describe the emotional colour her images bring to her words.

The details of Marie Sklodowksa and Pierre Curie's joint biographies are reasonably familiar to readers of science history - his early scientific talent and her struggle to get a scientific education; their romance and marriage; their separate and joint rese...more

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Dec 08, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Elizabeth by: Nancy

Shelves: graphic-novels, history, nytimes, science-and-medicine

As effusively praised in the New York Times .

HT:http://www.slate.com/id/2280395/, as emailed to me by my mother.

This book glows in the dark! Just like radium!

...Do you think that it has radium in it?

For some reason the title here does not give the proper subtitle: "A Tale of Love and Fallout".

Marie Curie was in what we would now call grad school from 1895-1903 (eight years), and had a baby in 1897 (her third year). In 1903, Marie Curie became the first woman to earn a doctorate in France, and wa...more

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Jun 17, 2012 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics-graphic-novels, non-fiction, library

Really lovely book—it wasn't really what I expected (was thinking it would be a more classic graphic novel) but truly beautiful. The art is incredible and the way the story skirts through history to get at the Curies' importance: wonderful.

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Jan 23, 2013 Kurt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, biography, art

Here's the short form. Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout is a biography of Marie Curie. That is roughly accurate and thoroughly uninteresting. In addition to being beautiful and beautifully told, this book is the story of Marie Curie, of her discoveries of radium and polonium, and of the legacies of them all.

Redniss begins her first chapter, Symmetry, cleverly and counter-intutively. On the left hand page is information about Pierre Curie, whom, we can pretty safely...more Here's the short form. Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout is a biography of Marie Curie. That is roughly accurate and thoroughly uninteresting. In addition to being beautiful and beautifully told, this book is the story of Marie Curie, of her discoveries of radium and polonium, and of the legacies of them all.

Redniss begins her first chapter, Symmetry, cleverly and counter-intutively. On the left hand page is information about Pierre Curie, whom, we can pretty safely deduce, will be the husband of Marie. On the right hand page is the first news of Marie Skłodowska. So far so good. Turn the page and a non sequitur, more information about Pierre but written in a way that doesn't connect to the previous page.

Ah.

The left hand pages of Symmetry are all Pierre. The right hand pages are all Marie.

Redniss is not always so aggressive about her structure, but it's smart to make her move in the opening pages because it teaches us that we have to be ready for the next trick, whatever it might be. Throughout her writing, the author locates the parallels between the Curies' love, lives, and research, and intertwines them from one chapter to the next. It is a tight and smart dramaturgical trick, nor does she get carried away with it. She discusses Marie Curie's first Nobel prize - in physics, with her husband and fellow researcher Henri Becquerel - and how Alfred Nobel made his fortune from which he could dispense philanthropic cheer via his development of dynamite. Similarly, Redniss notes, the Curies' discovery of radium and its use as a tool for treating cancer is also the foundation of the knowledge that will bring us the atomic bomb.

Then there's the artwork.

"Cyanotype" is a photographic processing technique that results in a distinctive blue tint - blueprints! - and is the basis of Redniss's work, although she goes on to paint and add to the basic backdrop throughout. The results are washes of bright color that often as not echo the content of the associated text. Or in the example above, the text on the right mirrors the positive space of the portrait on the left.

Not to be leave anything to someone else's choices, she further designed her own font for the book. The details of the artwork and the design are included at the end of the book.

I'm trying to keep in mind that all of the reasons I think this book is amazing and fantastic are the exact same reasons you might find it pretentious or cloying or overwrought or overly complicated. For me, it is a marvel of nonfiction storytelling that honors not only the subject's chronological life, but also the fallout of that life (Redniss's pun, not mine) and how one person (or one discovery) can ripple out forward. The metaphorical and symbolic possibilities of the artwork further enhance the writing by suggesting ideas and details without claiming them as written text would have to do, albeit perhaps with a caveat here and a caveat there.

This is probably a work that will divide its readership quickly and easily. If you don't care for the artwork, you'll be turned away from the text. The structure is the next hurdle, but I'm willing to bet that if you embrace the first, you'll embrace the second.(less)

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Sep 12, 2012 taeli rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novel, library-book

This is a graphic novel in the sense that it has pictures on most of the pages as well as words, (much like Audrey Niffenegger's _The Adventuress_ or _Three Incestuous Sisters_) rather than that of a comic book type of graphic novel. This book is the story of the relationship between Marie and Pierre Curie, their work, and how what they discovered evolved over time to become what it has today. It also delves into Marie's life after Pierre died and slightly touches on her daughter Irene and her h...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Louise rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, natl-book-award-nominee, scientists, france-bio-hist, graphic-history

Besides researching and writing this book, the author designed its type and created its art work. She used paper coated with light sensitive materials, imaging which was critical to the discovery of X-Rays and radiology. Lauren Redniss well deserves the National Book Award nomination for her writing and for her bibliographic art.

The book has the feel of its content. The use of color illustration and positioning of type on the page evoke the images of radiation both good and the bad. The story is...more

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Sep 01, 2012 Lindsay Miller rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, non-fiction, history, art, biography, chemistry

(Reviewer Background: Recently made work using cyanotype process. Recently wrote paper about atomic bomb testing. Rarely reads history or biography. Picked book up on a whim. Possibly compensating for tendencies in self and others to rate high.)

"It was okay" sounds about right.

I respect the author's experimental approach to the non-fiction book format, but some aspects work better than others.

The integration of art adds certain feels, but unevenness of production is a bit distracting for me. Th...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Jenn LeBow added it

Shelves: 3-book-3rd-thursdays

This week I took Einstein, Blossom, and Ladybug in for their annual portraits. A toy store sits right next door to the portrait place. In the window sat Ladybug’s bliss: a giant plush Sesame Street Abby Cadabby doll. Abby easily stands four feet tall. Ladybug has talked about it for three days straight, and she has a birthday coming up. I love the idea of her opening a huge box on her birthday, finding Abby, and flinging her arms around Abby’s fairy wings, so I stopped to ask the price.

Well. It...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: creativity, france, quest, problems-ideas

When I was in second grade, I was bored and my teacher did what all good teachers do when they have students who are bored in class: she assigned me a research project.

My research project was on Marie and Pierre Curie.

Here I was, seven years old, reading about radiation and atomic particles and nuclear energy. I was fascinated, even if I didn’t quite get everything I read.

The minute I saw this book, I knew it was a book that I had to read. If nothing else, I wanted to see if I understood radiati...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Brandon Mueller rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book, I can say, is far different from any book I have ever read. It tells of the life and findings of Marie and Pierre Curie through vibrantly-colored pictures and interestingly-placed words, and it is more than just a biography, it is a work of art. From their births to their deaths, this book tells of Marie's and Pierre's accomplishments and love, and along the way, more stories and sources are introduced from more modern times that link to radioactivity and how Marie's and Pierre's disc...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics-and-graphic-novels

[Note: A version of this review, in German, was published in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.]

A decade or two ago I spent a good deal of time pondering the poetic potential for comics. The 1980s and ‘90s were a time of innovation in the form: autobiography had asserted itself as perhaps the serious mode; cartoonists were exploring non-fiction and reportage, with results as impressive as Sacco’s PALESTINE; we witnessed some of the most exciting formal experimentation in the medium since its ea...more [Note: A version of this review, in German, was published in the Swiss comics journal STRAPAZIN.]

A decade or two ago I spent a good deal of time pondering the poetic potential for comics. The 1980s and ‘90s were a time of innovation in the form: autobiography had asserted itself as perhaps the serious mode; cartoonists were exploring non-fiction and reportage, with results as impressive as Sacco’s PALESTINE; we witnessed some of the most exciting formal experimentation in the medium since its earliest days (see, for example, RAW and the delightful books of Marc-Antoine Mathieu); and new, small publishers such as Amok/Freon and L’Association seemed principally influenced by elegant literary magazines and the fine art world. But where, I asked myself, was the poetry? Could comics “do” poetry, or were the two forms simply incompatible? And why didn’t anyone seem to be trying?

With Lauren Redniss’s RADIOACTIVE we have, I believe, a stunning example of comics-as-poetry. Not that the book is written in meter or free verse. In fact, it is fairly prose-heavy, though it reads very lightly. The book may not even properly be a “comic,” since it contains no panels or word balloons. But if RADIOACTIVE is not strictly poetic in form, it is deeply poetic in its sensibilities. Redniss has a subtle ear for language; a confident approach to line, color, and composition; and a breathtaking ability to juxtapose themes and ideas, or to combine words and pictures, so that the whole is artfully greater than the sum of its parts. That is, she has a master’s command of what makes good poetry and what makes good comics.

In simple terms, RADIOACTIVE is a biography of Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the first person to win the Nobel Prize twice (she did so in both Physics and Chemistry). The book is also a wide-ranging history of the human discovery of radiation and its profound effects on our lives: from enabling the progress of technology, to treating cancer, to harboring the potential to end human life via weapons of mass destruction. RADIOACTIVE reminded me of the best work of W.G. Sebald: it considers broad historical themes by means of intimate observations and philosophical insight, but leaves the reader to make connections—and continue making them after the book has been set down. (Which is another feature of the best poems.) For example, after the tragically early death of her husband Pierre, Marie begins to try to “rebuild her life,” and Redniss chooses that exact point to describe what happened at Chernobyl, and its after-effects.

RADIOACTIVE is a magnificent poetic collage, beautiful in its ideas and also beautiful as a physical object. It balances serious historical and life events with whimsy and wry humor. Redniss has done significant research, and the parts of the book that deal with hard science and history are serious but quite readable. She also makes great use of the rich and detailed journals the Curies left behind, pulling much of RADIOACTIVE's language directly from them, often with beautiful, multivalent poetic effect. And she offers fascinating historical material of her own, including interviews with a scientist studying the effects of radioactive disaster on the environment, and with a woman who witnessed the Hiroshima experience as a young girl. (No reader will ever forget that part of the book.)

The book’s pictures match its language and ideas in beauty and power. Most of the drawings are done in a Modernist style—hints of Picasso, Matisse, and Munch abound—which is fitting given that Curie’s scientific advances in the “magic” of radiation in many ways parallel what was going on at that time in literature and art. Her line drawings are energetic, but it is her use of color that dazzles—bold splashes and forms that variously call to mind Gauguin, Van Gogh, or Rothko. Many of the book’s pages were created using cyanotype printing, a technique that depends on the effects of the sun’s radiation on chemically treated paper. The process yields vivid cobalt-blue images reminiscent of X-ray slides, but with an internal glow that, Redniss writes in an Afterword, somehow capture what Marie Curie called radium’s “spontaneous luminosity.”

Named a Finalist for the National Book Award, Lauren Redniss’s RADIOACTIVE is as powerful and rare as an unstable isotope. As a biography, as a graphic novel, and as a work of art it is truly luminous. If you do not believe me, turn out the lights and see: the book even glows in the dark.
(less)

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Apr 12, 2012 Karyn marked it as to-read

Read Maria Popova's review on the Brain Picking website and immediately ordered my own copy. (Uh oh- think my "to-read" list is getting a little out of hand!)

What the periodic table has to do with obscure photographic techniques and Italian erotic séances.

"To stay true to Curie’s spirit and legacy, Redniss rendered her poetic artwork in an early-20th-century image printing process called cyanotype, critical to the discovery of both X-rays and radioactivity itself — a cameraless photographic tech...more

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Apr 01, 2012 Buffra rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is lovely. Illustrated and colorful, almost a graphic novel sensibility. The pages are richly colored and there are line drawings to illustrate. There are also pages that show things like a pencil rubbing of the Curie's headstone, a reprint of the very first x-ray, and a copy of an FBI file on someone who tried to convince FDR to begin the US's own atomic bomb project.

It has an interesting narrative structure -- almost more website jumps from link to link than straightforward biograph...more

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Nov 24, 2011 Carla rated it 4 of 5 stars

Nerd alert! This book chronicles the intertwined story of the nascent power of radioactivity and Marie Sklodowska Curie and Pierre Curie's professional and personal partnership. Just the look of the book is like no other I've laid my hands on recently -- the verbiage (in a font designed by the author) is interspersed with artistic images to match the story. In fact, there is a style of print used that is based on a chemical process that produces somewhat of a negative image that glows (just like...more

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Oct 27, 2011 Bruce rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked this up because (a) it's gotten glowing reviews as a National Book Award nominee for artistic and substantive excellence, (b) I enjoy nonfiction, especially nonfiction that evokes existential nuclear dread, and (c) I had hopes my 12 year old daughter would devour a graphic novel about Marie Curie. What can I say? I suppose I had higher expectations than this book could possibly meet. Such is life.

For a glimpse at Redniss' visual style, browse through the publisher's 'look inside'. Redni...more I picked this up because (a) it's gotten glowing reviews as a National Book Award nominee for artistic and substantive excellence, (b) I enjoy nonfiction, especially nonfiction that evokes existential nuclear dread, and (c) I had hopes my 12 year old daughter would devour a graphic novel about Marie Curie. What can I say? I suppose I had higher expectations than this book could possibly meet. Such is life.

For a glimpse at Redniss' visual style, browse through the publisher's 'look inside'. Redniss used cyanotype as the basis for her illustrations, a technique that involves exposing chemically-painted paper to sunlight for a period, masked by photocopied transparencies of hand line-drawing to generate a bluish batik. She has enhanced this in turn, with overpainting and digital color manipulation, and the result is certainly unlike either the benday dot or painterly approaches more typical of lavishly illustrated books. Not more sophisticated, mind you, just different. The idea of illustration via UV radiation is surely resonant with the book's title and theme, but apart from bluish bleed off Redniss' childlike line, it struck me as more of a conceptual than a visual resonance (and in fairness, I don't really put much stock in conceptual art that fails *also* to move me on its own merits).

Another Goodreader has commented on how Rothko-like Redniss' illustrations are, and I'm inclined to agree. I think the illustrations have tremendous value in establishing and underscoring the mood of the work as a whole; they are by no means incidental or distracting. However, I have to say I found the work as a whole to be somewhat on the thin side. Redniss breezes through the lives of the Curies (and even less thoroughly, their children, the Joliot-Curies) with all the depth of a Wikipedia entry, if Wikipedia assembled their articles by quoting diary excerpts, letters, and interviews. This is not to disdain the author's reliance on primary sources, only to observe that the book is constructed very much like an elaborate collage. As such, it is far more impressionistic than didactic, and so did not meet my expectations for a biography.

The Curies and their progeny remain ciphers as presented here, unfortunately. Notwithstanding the frequent thematic digressions (whether to help Marie give a nod to her Polish homeland by rattling off noteworthy Poles or to juxtapose the loneliness and devastation Marie must have experienced after the accidental death of her husband with the Chernobyl zone of exclusion, among many other brief lowlights in the history of nuclear physics), there is little sense here of a shared passion, obsession, fascination... anything that explains or lends understanding to a systematic life's work that systematically bled away her health and the health of those for whom she is said to have cared. Her investigations of radioactive elements must have made her figuratively as well as literally an enlightened soul, but this biography is utterly lacking in any sense of euphoria.

My daughter has glanced over my shoulder and tsk-tsked at my review... she thinks I'm too hard to please. Indeed I hope that this work will prove more impressionistic in memory than I experienced it in reality so that any resulting fondness might influence her future interests (she could do worse than to follow in the footsteps of Pierre, Marie, Irene, or Paul (Joliot) Curie). It's too bad the Edwardian language makes it less accessible to young adults, certainly unquotable.

You know what would have made this book really work for me? If it had been written as verse, as an epic unsung libretto that more fully evoked its characters and subject matter. This would have better complemented the mood of the illustrations and marked greater contrast with the frequent digressions about Hiroshima, Three Mile Island, Eniwetok, etc. that strained connection to the biographical subject matter. Re-assembled in verse, Redniss might have done for the Curies what John Adams' and Peter Sellars' Doctor Atomic did for Robert Oppenheimer.

Helas, this book does not succeed for me as a gesamkunstwerk. Because its elements taken separately are a bit lackluster (especially in light of my high expectations), I just found it unfulfilling.

To hold a galaxy in one's hands
And feel its incandescent brands
Will etch indelibly, in shadow spins
And each, in cast, invisibly, sins.

Was Curie's a poetic soul? Upon reflection, I'd like to think of her so.(less)

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Oct 15, 2011 Khaya rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: maybe-it-s-me, readablenonfiction, graphic-books

This was my first graphic novel (well, not really a novel -- graphic work of non-fiction? too long), and I think the medium may just not be for me. If I had to describe this book in one word, that word would be "distracting."

I was distracted by everything, particularly the pictures and the artistic but annoying-to-read font. The narrative itself was distracting, jumping around in time and space even though it all connected back to radioactivity. A more tolerant reader might have appreciated the...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, biography

This was a strange and intriguing book. I'm not sure if I've read anything like it...the closest I can compare it to would be the Griffin & Sabine books. Radioactive is a dual history of Pierre and Marie Curie's discoveries in radioactivity and the impact those discoveries have made on history, coupled with the personal stories of several characters, with a focus on Marie Curie. I don't think I've thought once about the Curies since I graduated high school (science is not my forte), but I'm...more

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Jan 12, 2011 Jasmine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: n-a

okay this is my last review before I go on vacation. [yay!!!] and since I have no intention of talking to any of you while I'm on vacation [nothing personal I'm just not bringing my computer or talking to anyone who isn't my best friend] I better make it good.

This book is perfectly fine. I is not worth the run on it that occurred, but I get why it didn't end up on back order like so many of the others and we got it in again pretty quick. it's nothing to write home about.

BUT do not for a second...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Helen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: two-thirds-challenge-2011-12

A.Maz.Ing. This book is not only stunningly gorgeous to look at but beautifully written. Every page, even the filler pages, were a treat to explore. It's not a graphic novel in the traditional sense, more an illustrated book for grown ups, if there's even a difference. The author uses her own designed font and a combination of cyanotype prints, hand drawings, paintings, photographs, ephemera, and creates a rich, new, full experience of the Curies and the fallout of their own lives that you simpl...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Eliza rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nba-finalists-2011, non-fiction, prize-winning-books, fomp-book-club, graphic-novel

7/11/12: This book is curious, strange and wonderful. It's hard even to know how to describe it: a visual biography? A graphic history? A picture book for adults?

Redniss, a graphic artist, has combined all of her talents to create a work that is at once a biography of Marie and Pierre Curie, their scientific discoveries, and their personal lives, AND a short and selective history of the use of radioactivity in the hundred years since the Curies' discoveries. The Curies' story is brilliant and t...more

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Apr 25, 2011 Sara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

"Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie. A Tale of Love and Fallout" (Harper Collins, 2011), by Lauren Redniss, is a fascinating scientific biography of the famous couple and their family. Along with Henri Becquerel, Pierre and Marie were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903 for their pioneering work in radioactivity (Marie herself coined the word "radioactivity"). Marie won a second Nobel Prize in 1911 for her discovery of radium and polonium; in 1935, their daughter and son-in-law, Irene and Frederi...more "Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie. A Tale of Love and Fallout" (Harper Collins, 2011), by Lauren Redniss, is a fascinating scientific biography of the famous couple and their family. Along with Henri Becquerel, Pierre and Marie were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903 for their pioneering work in radioactivity (Marie herself coined the word "radioactivity"). Marie won a second Nobel Prize in 1911 for her discovery of radium and polonium; in 1935, their daughter and son-in-law, Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie garnered the Nobel Prize for their discovery of artificial radioactivity.
Redniss interweaves her story of the Curies’ scientific progress with accounts of the many ways--both positive and negative--in which their research has touched our lives. There is a moving profile of a Japanese woman who watched her father die after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima as well as an interview with a young man who was successfully treated for an aggressive tumor with radiation therapy.
"Radioactive" is also a deeply affecting romance. "With the constant companionship that accompanied their research," Redniss writes, "the Curies' love deepened. They cosigned their published findings. Their handwriting intermingle in their notebooks. On the cover of one black canvas laboratory log, the initials "M" and "P" are scripted directly one atop the other." Their romantic and scientific collaboration was cut short in 1906 when Pierre was struck and killed by a horse-drawn carriage. A few years after Pierre's death, Marie had an affair with a married man that provoked such a scandal that she was advised not to attend the Nobel ceremony where she was to accept her second prize (she went anyway). Marie died in 1934 as a result of prolonged exposure to radiation; it surely would have killed Pierre as well if the horse hadn't done so first.
Last, "Radioactive" is a remarkable work of art; it is simply a beautiful book. Redniss illustrates her text with photographs, line drawings, and cyanotope prints that seem to glow with the luminosity of radium. Even the choice of using cyanotype printing ties into the theme of radioactivity. The process uses light-sensitive chemicals that form a compound commonly known as Prussian blue, an approved treatment for exposure to certain types of radioactivity.
There is even an amusing "Radioactive Bestiary and Garden" at the end of the book, featuring (among others) Spider-Man, who gained his superhuman abilities after being bitten by an irradiated spider, and Brazil nuts, the world's most naturally radioactive food.
"Radioactive" is not specifically marketed as a book for young adults, but the science is accessible enough for most teens. Redniss' gorgeous artwork will win over readers with a more artistic bent. This is bound to be one of my favorite books of the year.

Review first published in the News-Gazette, April 24, 2011. For more YA book reviews, please visit my website at www.saralatta.com

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Mar 25, 2012 K. Bird rated it 5 of 5 stars

Bravo, Lauren Redniss. Not since Sam Kean's "Disappearing Spoon: And other true tales of madness,love and the history of the world from the periodic table" have I been so engrossed while digesting history and science simultaneously.

But while Kean's book details the minute and anecdotal history of how each element in the periodic table was discovered and how politics and personal loves influenced those discoveries, Radioactive focuses on the Curie's work with Radium and Polonium.

And Radioactive u...more

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Jan 30, 2011 Warnie B. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, read-in-2011, history, biography-autobiography-memoir, non-fiction, science-nature

My husband gave this to me as an early Valentine's Day gift because he heard about it on NPR and knows me really well--I mean, how could I resist an art book that combines history, science and a love story? That GLOWS IN THE DARK? So yeah, it was an excellent gift.

This is basically the story of Marie and Pierre Curie--their marriage and their work, and the things that came out of both aspects of their relationship. The narrative moves back and forth through history from the late 1800s/early 190...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Liked it, didn't love it. It had a senior-year-art-project vibe to it, which isn't altogether a bad thing, but a more sophisticated artist could have done it better.

The overarching story of Marie Curie was good, and the isolated related bits were mostly (but not all) good too. The jumps between the main narrative and future applications of atomic science were too swift; my guess is that the author is a visual artist and not a writer. Sometimes it seemed like she was trying too hard to include pr...more

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Dec 20, 2011 Paula rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, history, hybrid-or-indeterminate, non-fiction, science

I find Marie Curie endlessly fascinating. I am also intrigued by the replication (as if through DNA) of a model of partner marriage across generations: Marie & Pierre Curie, Irene & Frederic Joliot-Curie, Helene Joliot-Curie & a grandson of Paul Lanegevin. Perhaps proof that the Curies' relationship was not just a high-profile fluke but a replicable prototype. The feminist me, as always, finds this encouraging. I enjoyed this easy reading review of the Curies & their associates'...more

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Jun 12, 2011 pinknantucket rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: ms-readathon-2011

A gorgeous book. It mightn't be of such interest to someone who already knows a lot about the science of radioactivity, but the Curies' story is presented here so beautifully I suspect you'd still enjoy it. The author has interwoven the story of Marie & Pierre Curie with pieces about the legacy of their work - e.g. nuclear medicine and nuclear weapons - and generally including first-person narratives from people affected or involved.

There's a video of the author talking about her work (see h...more

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