The Uranium Club, Miriam E. Hiebert
The Uranium Club, Miriam E. Hiebert
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The Uranium Club
Unearthing Lost Relics of the Nazi Nuclear Program

Author: Miriam E. Hiebert, Timothy W. Koeth

Narrator: Wendy Tremont King

Unabridged: 10 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/11/2023


Synopsis

Tim Koeth peered into the crumpled brown paper lunch bag; inside was a surprisingly heavy black metal cube. He recognized the mysterious object instantly—he had one just like it sitting on his desk at home. It was uranium metal, taken from the nuclear reactor that Nazi scientists had tried—and failed—to build at the end of World War II. This unexpected gift, wrapped in a piece of paper inscribed with a few cryptic but crucial lines, would launch Koeth, a nuclear physicist and professor, and his colleague Miriam Hiebert, a cultural heritage scientist, on an odyssey to trace the tale of these cubes—two of the original 664 on which the Third Reich had pinned their nuclear ambitions.

From Werner Heisenberg and Germany's nuclear program to the Curies, the first family of nuclear physics, to the Allied Alsos Mission's infiltration of Germany to capture Nazi science to the renegade geologists of Murray Hill scouring the globe for uranium, the cubes are lodestars that illuminate a little-known—and hugely consequential—chapter of history.

The cubes are physical testimony to the stories of the German failure, and the successful American program that launched the world into the modern nuclear age, and the lessons for modern science that the contrast in these two programs has to offer.

About Miriam E. Hiebert

Miriam E. Hiebert was first introduced to cultural heritage science at the University of Richmond. While completing her BS in chemistry, she participated in the conservation of an Egyptian mummy, Ti Ameny Net. During her graduate work in materials science and engineering at the University of Maryland, she met Tim Koeth and became interested in nuclear history. Hiebert currently works as a researcher at the Smithsonian on a multiyear survey of glass collections. She lives in Laurel, Maryland.


Reviews

Goodreads review by A.M. Flynn-Davis🪐 on July 04, 2023

*****Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this AMAZING Audiobook! If you love anything Historical then you’re going to enjoy this one. It’s so detailed about the Nazi Nuclear Program. I’m not a stranger to research of this topic but learned a bit more I didn’t know even happened.......more

Goodreads review by Hannah on September 03, 2023

I highly recommend reading The Bastard Brigade or another book on the Manhattan Project before approaching this book. You will appreciate it more. The story behind the Nazi nuclear project was as fascinating as I expected, and the reasons for its failures dumber than I expected. The book is a great......more

Goodreads review by Cal on February 18, 2024

Really interesting account of both the Nazi nuclear program and the allied efforts to distrupt the program and capture the scientists involved. The German effort to build a nuclear bomb was a subject I always was interested in, and this book explored the scientists involved and what hampered the pro......more

Goodreads review by Jackie on July 13, 2023

The Uranium Club is about the beginnings of the ‘atomic age’ and how things shook out in WWII. I picked this book thinking that my husband may enjoy listening to it on a road trip, and he picked another book, so I was stuck doing this one on my own. ;) I was surprised how absorbable it really was for......more

Goodreads review by Taylor on August 15, 2023

This was a creative, well-presented, and entertaining piece of historical research - until the last chapter.......more