The Curve of Binding Energy

A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor

John McPhee

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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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.

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Curve of Binding Energy, The
TO many people who have participated professionally in the advancement of the nuclear age, it seems not just possible but more and more apparent that nuclear explosions will again take place in cities. It seems to them likely, almost beyond quibbling, that more nations now have nuclear bombs than the six that have tested them, for it is hardly necessary to test a bomb in order to make one. There is also no particular reason the maker need be a nation. Smaller units could do it--groups of people with a common purpose or a common enemy.

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Praise for The Curve of Binding Energy

A book holding, with pretty good authority, that tens of thousands of people know enough about the bomb and are close enough to what they don't know to produce a bomb at home . . . The report's art at its difficult best." --Alvin Beam, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer

"Though dwellers in the nuclear age should ponder this book, as much for its intellectual excitement as for its warning." --Edmund Fuller, The Wall Street Journal

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About the Author

John McPhee

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written nearly 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977.  In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World.  He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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The Curve of Binding Energy
A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor
John McPhee

e-Book Agency

e-Book Agency
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
April 2011
e-Book Agency
ISBN: 9780374708610
ISBN10: 0374708614
240 pages
$9.99

Hardcover

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Hardcover
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
May 1974
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780374133733
ISBN10: 0374133735
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 240 pages
$30.00

Trade Paperback

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Trade Paperback
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks
April 1994
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780374515980
ISBN10: 0374515980
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 236 pages
$16.00
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