Another chapter in the fascinating relationship between Bohr, Heisenberg et al. Segré centers his account on the legendary gathering of physicists at Bohr's Institute in 1932, the year before Hitler's rise to power would scatter their company across the globe.

The social history is mildly entertaining, and the development of quantum theory and its associated controversies is presented so that even a dilettante like me can follow it, but the "Faustian" drama at its core is minimal. The implicit morality tale feels a bit forced. And for me, every key turn of the story evokes Richard Rhode's magnum opus The Making of the Atom Bomb as well as Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen.

Which of course is unfair to Segré... but I suspect I'm not the only one who reads him in the shadow of those greater works.