The Curve of Binding Energy, by John McPhee

I was late to the sciences, struggling through basic requirements in high school and then completely ignoring them through college. After almost a decade in the working world I returned to school to become a physician. One of the premed requirements I had to take before even applying to medical school was physics - a counter intuitive exercise for me, at least in the beginning (a few early Saturdays were almost entirely spent trying to figure out the direction of forces, resultant acceleration, and so forth).  With time came a modicum of aptitude and I began to enjoy the subject - in particular, the section on subatomic particles. Rutgers (where I did my post baccalaureate premedical schooling) didn't go so for as to teach us how to build a nuclear reactor (or bomb, for that matter), and McPhee's book doesn't either, though it comes close. The book is really the story of Ted Taylor, a nuclear physicist of note who worked with the biggies at Los Alamos and other places in the decades after World War II. His contributions to both the development of the science (e.g. how to increase bomb yield while reducing the size of bombs) and the safeguarding of nuclear material are significant. McPhee's writing is vintage - crisp, lean and easy. As I tell my friends, and have probably scribed before, the guy could write about paint drying and make it interesting. No need here - an interesting topic unto itself. And, despite being written in the early 1970's, it still holds form today. Though I imagine the safeguarding of nuclear material is more secure now 40 years later.