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Lauren Redniss

Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout Hardcover – December 21, 2010

by Lauren Redniss (Author)

289 ratings

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In 1891, 24-year-old Marie Sklodowska moved from Warsaw to Paris, where she found work in the laboratory of Pierre Curie, a scientist engaged in research on heat and magnetism. They fell in love. They took their honeymoon on bicycles. They expanded the periodic table, discovering two new elements with startling properties, radium and polonium. They recognized radioactivity as an atomic property, heralding the dawn of a new scientific era. They won the Nobel Prize. Newspapers mythologized the couple's romance, beginning articles on the Curies with "Once upon a time . . . " Then, in 1906, Pierre was killed in a freak accident. Marie continued their work alone. She won a second Nobel Prize in 1911, and fell in love again, this time with the married physicist Paul Langevin. Scandal ensued. Duels were fought.

In the century since the Curies began their work, we've struggled with nuclear weapons proliferation, debated the role of radiation in medical treatment, and pondered nuclear energy as a solution to climate change. In Radioactive, Lauren Redniss links these contentious questions to a love story in 19th Century Paris.

Radioactive draws on Redniss's original reporting in Asia, Europe and the United States, her interviews with scientists, engineers, weapons specialists, atomic bomb survivors, and Marie and Pierre Curie's own granddaughter.

Whether young or old, scientific novice or expert, no one will fail to be moved by Lauren Redniss's eerie and wondrous evocation of one of history's most intriguing figures.

Print length

208 pages
Language

English
Publisher

It Books
Publication date

December 21, 2010
Dimensions

8.5 x 1 x 11.5 inches
ISBN-10

0061351326
ISBN-13

978-0061351327
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2010: Lauren Redniss’s brilliant biography-in-collage is an astounding portrait of Marie and Pierre Curie, the husband-and-wife team who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. Broken into seven chapters (introduced with scientific terms that hint at the stories to come), Radioactive fuses quotes from the scientists themselves with ones from the Curies’ own granddaughter, engineering and weapons experts, and even atomic bomb survivors that form a most interesting and informative narrative. Redniss’s styling doesn’t end with the way she tells the story: Radioactive is as visually stunning as it is factually rich. She jumps from black-and-white sketches to vibrantly colored depictions of the young couple’s courtship, collaborations, and eventually Pierre’s unexpected death. Within the stark pages of the chapter titled “Isolation,” the reader feels Marie’s loss; then in “Exposure” we watch as she falls in love again--this time under more controversial circumstances. Despite personal challenges, Marie continued to be ambitious and eventually became the first female professor at the Sorbonne, winning a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In Radioactive, Redniss shows a similar determination. Through her moody, evocative collages, she captures the drama of the Curies’ lives and their contributions to science and medicine, sending the reader on a one-of-a-kind historical and biographical journey that any curious mind will appreciate. --Jessica Schein

A Look Inside Radioactive: A Tale of Love and Fallout
Click on the photos below to open larger images.

Despite the tight quarters in his lab, Pierre Curie managed to find room for the delicate and grave foreign student. Marie Sklodowska and Pierre Curie wed on July 26, 1895. In 1900 Pierre strapped a tube of radium against his arm for ten hours. “To his joy, a lesion appeared,” reported his daughter Eve.

Review

“[An] excellent new book.” -- Robert Krulwich, NPR

“[A] sumptuously illustrated visual biography….Radioactive is an incisive look at science’s greatest partnership.” -- Vogue

“One of the most beautiful books-as-object that I’ve ever seen.” -- Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“[Radioactive is] a deeply unusual and forceful thing to have in your hands. Ms. Redniss’s text is long, literate and supple…Her drawings are both vivid and ethereal…Radioactive is serious science and brisk storytelling. The word ‘luminous’ is a critic’s cliché, to be avoided at all costs, but it fits.” -- New York Times

“Radioactive is quite unlike any book I have ever read―part history, part love story, part art work and all parts sheer imaginative genius.” -- Malcolm Gladwell

“Absolutely dazzling. Lauren Redniss has created a book that is both vibrant history and a work of art. Like radium itself, Radioactive glows with energy.” -- Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

“Radioactive offer innumerable wonders. Colors suddenly bloom into tremendous feeling, history contracts into a pair of elongated figures locked in an embrace, then expands again in an explosive rush of words. In this wholly original book about passion and discovery Lauren Redniss has invented her own unique form.” -- Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love

From the Back Cover

In 1891, 24 year old Marie, née Marya Sklodowska, moved from Warsaw to Paris, where she found work in the laboratory of Pierre Curie, a scientist engaged in research on heat and magnetism. They fell in love. They took their honeymoon on bicycles. They expanded the periodic table, discovering two new elements with startling properties, radium and polonium. They recognized radioactivity as an atomic property, heralding the dawn of a new scientific era. They won the Nobel Prize. Newspapers mythologized the couple's romance, beginning articles on the Curies with "Once upon a time . . . " Then, in 1906, Pierre was killed in a freak accident. Marie continued their work alone. She won a second Nobel Prize in 1911, and fell in love again, this time with the married physicist Paul Langevin. Scandal ensued. Duels were fought.

In the century since the Curies began their work, we've struggled with nuclear weapons proliferation, debated the role of radiation in medical treatment, and pondered nuclear energy as a solution to climate change. In Radioactive, Lauren Redniss links these contentious questions to a love story in 19th Century Paris.

Radioactive draws on Redniss's original reporting in Asia, Europe and the United States, her interviews with scientists, engineers, weapons specialists, atomic bomb survivors, and Marie and Pierre Curie's own granddaughter.

Whether young or old, scientific novice or expert, no one will fail to be moved by Lauren Redniss's eerie and wondrous evocation of one of history's most intriguing figures.

About the Author

Lauren Redniss is the author of Century Girl: 100 years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis, Last Living Star of the Ziegfeld Follies and Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout, a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award for non fiction. Her writing and drawing has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, which nominated her work for the Pulitzer Prize. She was a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers at the New York Public Library in 2008-2009 and became a New York Institute for the Humanities fellow in 2010. Beginning in 2012, she will be artist-in-residence at the American Museum of Natural History. She teaches at Parsons the New School for Design in New York City.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ It Books; First Edition (December 21, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0061351326
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061351327
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.11 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 1 x 11.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #835,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #711 in Historical France Biographies
- #2,012 in Scientist Biographies
- #11,080 in Women's Biographies

Customer Reviews:
289 ratings

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Lauren Redniss

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Lauren Redniss is the author of three books. She has been a Guggenheim fellow, Artist-in-Residence at the American Museum of Natural History, and finalist for the National Book Award. She teaches at Parsons The New School for Design.

The National Book Foundation wrote the following in their citation of Radioactive, the first visual book to be named a finalist for the National Book Award in Non-Fiction:

“Redniss’ achievement is a celebration of the essential power of books to inform, charm, and transport. In marrying the graphic and visual arts with biography and cultural history, she has expanded the realm of non-fiction.”

Customer reviews

5 star		74%
4 star		12%
3 star		6%
2 star		4%
1 star		4%

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Andrea Gehrett

ZERO STARS! NOT A REAL BOOK!

Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2020

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Thought I was getting a real book. This is random bits and pieces with horrible scribble drawings and an even worse font. One of the worst fonts I have ever seen. Looks like five year old wrote it. I have never been so disappointed in a book. It is literally going straight into the trash.

5 people found this helpful

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Elizabeth Kerns

Hard to read --

Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2020

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Though the content is meaningful, it's hard to read this as the text is too densely layed-out on each page--not really a graphic novel--way too much text per page! It's more like an illustrated narrative in need of better pacing. Marie herself might have struggled trying to read it.

3 people found this helpful

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H & M

Failed new concept.

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2022

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50 pages worth of a passable biography of Pierre and Marie Curie. 100 pages of primitive, child-like art. 25 pages of stuff only tangentially connected to the Curies; unverified anecdotes like partially albino birds near Chernobyl, a lady who found odd-looking plants around Three Mile Island, and a woman who claimed to have her liver failure healed by exposure to radiation in a high Radon concentration mine. Hard to read - in some places the text is too small, some places there is low contrast text on brightly colored pages, and some places have much too small margins that puts text right into the bound edge of the page. I generally give books I've read to friends but in this case the book went right into the recycling bin.

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F. T. Popiel

Fascinating on many levels

Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2015

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'Radioactive' is everything I hoped for and more. This book is fascinating on several levels.
1. Biographical - It brings Marie to life and illuminates the many chapters of her life journey.
2. Scientific - It illustrates the discovery of a whole unknown class of elements, the dangers and how they ultimately improved our lives.
3. Artistic - The full-page illustrations are done in a fresh, creative new medium that evokes the mystery of newly-discovered x-rays.
4. Philosophical - The reflections on how Marie changed our lives are melancholy but uplifting and thought-provoking.
I will be passing this book on to my daughter, a literature professor, for her enjoyment.

8 people found this helpful

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Roger Brunyate

Way Outside the Box

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2015

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So I order this to read for our book club, thinking it would be just a normal account of the Curies' discovery of radioactivity. The book arrives. Surely there must be some mistake; this looks like something for children -- pages filled with big colored illustrations mingled with occasional paragraphs of handwritten text. But no, while often childlike, the book is never childish. And the mixture of media gives only a hint of how widely author-artist Lauren Redniss has foraged to fill her cornucopia of art, science, and history.

She starts by apologizing to Marie Curie for ignoring her insistence that "there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life." Not only does she make such a connection, she glories in it. Look at the chapter headings of the first part: Symmetry, Magnetism, Fusion; scientific terms, but also personal ones. In the opening chapter, Redniss portrays the separate lives of Pierre and Marie in symmetry, on opposite pages, before showing the magnetism that drew them together as a couple, and the fusion that produced a child. But she also tells us of Pierre's work on the symmetry of crystals, and Marie's on magnetism and radiation. The question of atomic fusion (and fission) lies far in the future.

But Redniss goes there too. At the very end of the first part, amid drawings of Marie and Pierre embracing in their laboratory, she has the words: "The new science needed a name." Turn the page to a double spread glowing in a muted cloudburst, containing only the words, "I coined the term radioactivity." Then look again, and you realize that the cloudburst is really an atomic blast -- not at all in your face, but lurking there as a threat.

Although the longer second part continues with the story of the Curies, it strikes off sparks in many other directions: spiritualism, for example, the dancer Loïe Fuller, a list of famous Poles. A photograph of a man receiving radium treatment for a tumor in 1920 is juxtaposed with the first-hand account of a tumor survivor in 2001. Soon, we are jumping to Chernobyl, the Manhattan Project, and Three-Mile Island, and each time Redniss finds some unexpected witness to bring her message home. An FBI surveillance report; photos of the mutant zinnias and roses found near Harrisburg; the reports of a biologist studying wildlife in the Ukraine. One of the most effective spreads in the book is also the simplest, a black paper cutout used by a survivor of Hiroshima to show how her father's blackened skin peeled away at a touch.

"A tale of love and fallout," says the subtitle. Nothing is predictable, neither the great discoveries nor their unexpected consequences, and love is the least logical thing of all. So by jumping around in subject and time, Redniss is only celebrating the power of surprise. She is thinking outside the box, way outside. The skill with which she balances the glory of the Curies' discoveries and their continued benefits against their terrible consequences would be remarkable even in a book that was all text. But the illustrations offer a further layer of unpredictability. In almost no case does she simply illustrate the action; her drawings are bold, somewhat expressionist, even disturbing. I can't say that I like them as art, but as a constantly shifting matrix for a subject that refuses to be pinned down, their effect is powerful indeed.

My only real complaint is that patches on the hard cover are printed in slightly raised ink like fine sandpaper, that you fear coming off on your hands. But close the cover and put out the lights, and you will see their purpose: the book literally glows in the dark!

14 people found this helpful

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Judith Duff

This biography in collage , a very interesting dormat

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2019

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When I received this book and glanced at the pages I was very disappointed but then I decided to read it anyway and was so impressed by the format. It is a biography in collage and it told the story very well and added surprises such a notable people from Poland. This is a must try book.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz

Radiation and atomic particles and nuclear energy

Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2012

Verified Purchase

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 radiation and atomic particles and nuclear energy any better this side of life.

Even though this book was a National Book Award Finalist, I could not find it at any of the seven libraries to which I have cards. I finally broke down and bought it.

It was a worthwhile purchase. I'd classify it as a graphic novel, a picture book for grownups, with brilliant illustrations that add to the text.

Lauren Redniss, who wrote the text and created the illustrations, tells the story of Marie and Pierre Curie, a story of the power and destruction that came with the discovery of radiation.

One of my favorite reads of this year.

9 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Starlight

very imaginative

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2012

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This is not an ordinary biography ,more an evocation of a thoroughly biographed subject.
The author uses artistic techniques and images to present the Curies and their work and follows several strands of inquiry and thought,including the consequences of their work. There are some very striking and unusual correlations too.For example the fact that Pierre was born on the Rue Cuvier,named after the man who believed evolution to have advanced by catastrophes.lauren Redniss remarks that Pierre Curie's death was itself a kind of catastrophe.She might have mentioned that on the day of his fatal accident San Francisco was also struck by a terrible earthquake.'
She does not duck the Curies' interest in spiritualism either ,or the fact of the 'Mmerry Widow ' health mine in the US.
The last part of Marie's life may be a little sparsely treated and Frederick Joliot hardly figures.The cartoon picture of Irene however catches her gaze perfectly.
If you know what you are not expecting with this book ,(viz.an orthodox biography),it is excellent .

One person found this helpful

Dandyhighwaywoman

Brilliant, wish i had bought it sooner

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2016

Verified Purchase

Read it over a couple of days - amazing illustrations and the story reads wonderfully - it bounces back between historical events and more modern day issues - very clever (much better than the recent one... the thunderstorms and weather book)

Fabi

I love everything about this beautiful book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 5, 2016

Verified Purchase

I love everything about this beautiful book. Lauren Redniss sews art, love, chemistry and history together perfectly, nothing is gratuitous.
I just found the other day (as this is my forever bedside table book) that the cover glows in the dark.

Rosie

This was a much more heavy read than I expected ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 6, 2016

Verified Purchase

This was a much more heavy read than I expected - packed with facts and reams of text - but it was all interesting and the pictures are gorgeous.

Shirley Isaacs

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 28, 2018

Verified Purchase

wonderful book.

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Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout Hardcover – December 21, 2010

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