Atomic Adventures
Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder—A Journey into the Wild World of Nuclear Science

I’ve spent a few years of my life aboard navy submarines and, much later, I lived practically next door to the Hanford site in Washington. I can tell you from first hand experience that those brainy, nerdish types who earn their living near nuclear reactors and radioactive substances are fairly inte......more

A collection of stories on various nuclear topics such as N-rays, Cold Fusion, nuclear powered bombers and the 'Star Wars Program'. It is a collection of unrelated anecdotes, journalism, memoir, and history, some better than others. I especially liked his personal tale of that few weeks he thought t......more

The history of science is to some extent a history of failure, but most of us don't think much about those failures. In Atomic Adventures James McHaffey dives into scientific misfires with a gleeful good humor (even when he is connected with the mistake personally). But failure can be both fascinati......more

James Mahaffey is former senior research scientist in nuclear physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who, as he says near the end of this book, now writes books. If you enjoy geeks geeking on about what they love (and I very much do), his books are a lot of fun. This one is about some of the......more

This was a very readable and quite accessible overview of a number of topics in nuclear science, some amusing, some exciting or even inspiring, several chilling, and some of which made me very uncomfortable if not outright squeamish. Though at times it could be a little technical, the author overall......more