Before the Fall-Out

On December 26, 1898, Marie Curie announced the discovery of radium and observed that "radioactivity seems to be an atomic property." Some 47 years later, her startling insight was on full and horrific display as "Little Boy" exploded over Hiroshima. Before the Fallout is the epic story of the intervening half century, during which an exhilarating quest to unravel the secrets of the material world revealed the knowledge of how to destroy it, and an open, international, scientific adventure transmuted overnight into a wartime sprint for the bomb. Weaving together history, science, and…