Chain Reactions (Hardback)
A Hopeful History of Uranium
Lucy Jane Santos
Tracing uranium's past, and how it intersects with our understanding of other radioactive elements, this book aims to disentangle our attitudes and to unpick the atomic mindset.
Chain Reactions looks at the fascinating, often-forgotten, stories that can be found throughout the history of the element. Ranging from glassworks to penny stocks; medicines to weapons; something to be feared to a powerful source of energy, this global history not only explores the development of our scientific understanding of uranium, but also shines a light on its cultural and social impact.
By understanding our nuclear past, we can move beyond the ideological opposition to atomic technology and encourage a more nuanced dialogue about whether it is feasible – and desirable – to have a genuinely nuclear-powered future.
Lucy Jane Santos, author of Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium and Chain Reactions: A Hopeful History of Uranium, is an expert in the history of the twentieth-century with a particular interest in the cultural history of all things nuclear. She is the Executive Secretary of the British Society for the History of Science. Lucy lives in England.
Chain Reactions is an essential read for those interested in the history and future of our applications of the atomic nucleus. It is enlightening, engaging, tragic, funny, accurate, and optimistic, all at once. Lucy Jane Santos' research and analysis have uncovered nearly-forgotten archival information and cleanly extracted an authoritative reality from stories riddled with myth and controversy. I've engaged with nuclear history for the past 20 years, and yet still learned something new and important on each page.Nick Touran, What is Nuclear
Full of surprising facts from a tumultuous past, Lucy Jane Santos offers an intriguing and entertaining story of a powerful element with revolutionary potential.Marco Visscher, author of The Power of Nuclear: The Rise, Fall and Return of Our Mightiest Energy Source
Uranium has lurked at the centre of some of our strangest visions and strongest fears in the modern world. Lucy Jane Santos has written a light, entertaining and revealing history of a heavy elementProfessor Jon Agar, University College London
A fascinating and richly detailed history charting an illuminating course through the story of one of the most useful and destructive elements.Kat Arney, Science writer and broadcaster
There is much to enjoy in Santos' breezy and – yes – hopeful historyPhysics World
Genuinely interesting throughout.Brian Clegg
For those new to the topic it provides a diverting and idiosyncratic primer.Times Literary Supplement
One might think there is nothing new to learn about these subjects. But Lucy Jane Santos's book Chain Reactions: A Hopeful History of Uranium gives readers a fresh look at each of these topics as she traces the role of the 92nd entry on the periodic table through the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.Science
This is not a book on the physics of this historically important element, and the story of the atom bomb's construction is crisply condensed. Rather, Ms. Santos, the executive secretary of the British Society for the History of Science, explores both the academic and popular literature to unearth long-forgotten stories, both entertaining and horrifying, that capture the broader impact of uranium on our society.Wall Street Journal
