Curve of Binding Energy
Theodore Taylor was one of the most brilliant engineers of the nuclear age, but in his later years he became concerned with the possibility of an individual being able to construct a weapon of mass destruction on their own. McPhee tours American nuclear institutions with Taylor and shows us how close we are to terrorist attacks employing homemade nuclear weaponry.
Stats for nerds
19recommend
30mentions
24people
2009–2026years
70% recommend27% neutral3% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- John McPhee is a great underrated non-fiction author, up there with the late Tracy Kidder. I particularly like McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy" about the physicist Theodore B. Taylor.
- McPhee was recommended as someone whose writing "makes boring things interesting". I did enjoy The Curve of Binding Energy (nuclear science) and to some extent Coming out of the Country (Alaska). Both of those featured interesting vignettes and colorful characters which propelled along the narrative.
However, I then turned to his magnum opus on geology, Annals of the Former World. That was a long slog which, although I enjoyed moments of it, now I wonder if my time wouldn't have been better spent reading something more interesting.
- John McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy".
- Read: The Curve of Binding Energy (McFee)- will blow your mind for sure, NPI
- McPhee is truly a national treasure. If you're interested, that article was one of several published in his book Uncommon Carriers which includes a train and river barge voyage. Looking for a Ship is also great as it follows a merchant marine through various stages of that job.
The Curve of Binding Energy is a fascinating study of Theodore Taylor, the engineer behind the smallest nuke warhead in the world, and his concerns that terrorists may be able to build warheads themselves.
Pretty much any McPhee book or article is fascinating. His book Oranges is all about farming oranges, processing orange juice so it can sit in refrigerated vats for months (and how it is reconstituted through "flavor packs" that give it back the OJ flavors after long storage) and all kind of other orange stories. No matter what rabbit hole McPhee jumps down, his research and writing are nothing short of engrossing.
- You might check out John McPhee’s The Curve of Binding Energy, a non-fiction book.
There’s a lot of stuff in there about how his interview subject (a former nuclear weapons designer) would approach the problem of designing an improvised nuclear device (circa about 1974)…
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