Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout

by Lauren Redniss

Paperback, 2015

Collections

Your library, Graphic novels

Genres

Graphic Novels

General Nonfiction

Graphic Novels and Comics

Nonfiction

Comics

All Topics

Publication

Dey Street Books (2015), Edition: Reprint, 208 pages

Description

Presents the professional and private lives of Marie and Pierre Curie, examining their personal struggles, the advancements they made in the world of science, and the issue of radiation in the modern world.

Media reviews

Nature

Writer and artist Lauren Redniss's Radioactive is no ordinary biography of Marie and Pierre Curie. The story of radioactivity, one of the most exciting discoveries of the past 100 or so years, is brightly visualized through Redniss's imagination in her illustrated book. Ideas, scientific choices,

motivations and insatiable passions unfurl in her elegant cyanotype drawings and are enacted by ethereal figures set into motion by the author's eloquence.

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Pittsburg Post-Gazette

The short history of modern graphic storytelling has produced plenty of books whose visuals dwarf the text. Occasionally, the tale trumps the art. Rare is the book that marries great fiction or nonfiction with visual elements that wow the viewer and have a purposeful, amplifying connection to

the text. So put this one on your list. The illustrated biography of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie also explores some of the well-known unintended consequences of Curie's work in radioactivity. And the book incorporates contemporary voices of those whose lives would've been vastly different -- better and worse -- without Pierre and Marie Curie's discoveries. All of that informs Ms. Redniss the visual artist, who places her story against a backdrop of historical photographs, collage and neoprimitive drawings, many finished with a special process that lends a graphic glow to some pages. It echoes the energy that lights up skeletons in X-rays and illuminated radioactive watch dials during World War I. . . .

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