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Title: The Radioactive Boy Scout : The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor by KEN SILVERSTEIN ISBN: 0-375-50351-X Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.88 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Atom is Our Friend
Comment: There's something not quite serious about The Radioactive Boy Scout. The book jacket has a cartoonish design and each page has a little atomic symbol by the page number. It's a small book, almost like a children's reader. It seemed to me as if it would be a quick, fun read.
Well, it was quick, all right. Author Ken Silverstein originally wrote this as an article for Harper's Magazine, according to the blurb. The article has been padded with several chapters on nuclear power, chemistry, and the history of the Boy Scouts. But The Radioactive Boy Scout is hardly a cartoon or a fun little story.
Although this is a story about how one teenager nearly built a nuclear reactor in his back yard, Silverstein wants us to know it is more than that. He emphasizes how David Hahn, the teenager, was neglected by his parents and not taken seriously by his teachers. If only someone had taken the time to take this boy under his wing, perhaps a near-disaster could have been averted. Certainly, the fact that there was no disaster takes the edge off the story, but unfortunately, we already know what can happen when teenagers don't get the attention they need.
I enjoyed the main story as well as the chapters on science and the Boy Scouts. Silverstein describes how radium-based products were sold in the early 20th century as tonics, lotions, and even suppositories, to improve one's health. He recalls filmstrips (remember?) and pamphlets that cheerfully told us to "duck and cover" in the event of a nuclear explosion. He uses a hilarious passage from P.G. Wodehouse to illustrate a common view of the Boy Scouts in their early days.
Although I share most of Silverstein's opinions on federal government, the nuclear power industry, the Boy Scouts, and inattentive parents, I think the story would have been more effective if he had left his editorial comments out. Describing David's father as "pathologically oblivious" is unnecessary. True, but unnecessary.
Rating: 4
Summary: Easy, quick read
Comment: I really enjoyed reading this book and found the story to be quite interesting. The story is not all that involved, so the author intersperses the storyline with chapters on nuclear development. I was somewhat disappointed with the ending as the build up to end was much better than the end itself. Of course, in a non-fiction account, we can't make a cool, tidy ending to a fascinating story if the story doesn't end in a cool, tidy way.
200 small pages with an interesting storyline, so it doesn't take long to finish.
Rating: 3
Summary: Being left out of the equation.
Comment: This book was quite scary. And it wasn't even fiction, which made it all the more frightening. (I also found it equally as frightening that at least two of the previous reviewers spelled "Manhattan" incorrectly as "Manhatten." It's called a dictionary. Look into it.)
In addition to hearing about how seemingly easy it was for David Hahn, the radioactive boy scout described in the title, to obtain radioactive materials from regular, nonrestricted products, I was just as surprised and shocked to hear about some of the other, larger nuclear accidents of the past few decades, some of them not well publicized.
While I was aware of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and some of the others, there were incidents from the 1960s such as the British Windscale plant and the breeder reactor around Detroit, which I'd never heard of.
(While the author is at it, he might look at Brookhaven National Labs in NY. Given the cancer clusters in the areas around it, I'm sure there's a book there too.)
I did see that the main story of David Hahn didn't take up a huge amount of space and that there was some padding with other, related material. However, I don't think that diminishes the impact of the story. The lesson here is that while nuclear planners have strategies for regulated, large-scale nuclear accidents, small-scale efforts by individuals seem to have been left out of the equation entirely.
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Title: Bobby Fischer Goes to War : How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time by David Edmonds, John Eidinow ISBN: 0060510242 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Linguist and the Emperor : Napoleon and Champollion's Quest to Decipher the Rosetta Stone by DANIEL MEYERSON ISBN: 0345450671 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival by Dean King ISBN: 0316835145 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin ISBN: 0575074019 Publisher: Gollancz Pub. Date: March, 2004 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: 100 Suns by Michael Light ISBN: 1400041139 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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