Redirecting Science: Niels Bohr, Philanthropy, and the Rise of Nuclear Physics Book

Fictionalist Smartt Bell has written not so much a biography (he is a sense a strict behaviorist, presenting little of the scientist's inner life) or intellectual history (though there are some aspects of that) as a morality tale in which Lavosier's eminent reasonableness, exactitude, and genius square off against the forces of madness - an hagiography of a martyr for good sense. Bell joins scientific and political evil in the villainous figure of Marat who, bitter that Lavosier has exposed his quackery, hounds him in the press and stirs up the formless "the mob" against him. If Lavosier himself has any crimes to speak of, it is only in being too charitable (in both senses) and too endearingly socially oblivious, unaware that his public generosity might be seen by the public as condescending in the same way that he remains unaware of his wife's (and otherwise also heroic sidekick's) infidelity.

Since I am no expert in the relevant subject matter, I can make no judgment on how factually accurate the book is in its particulars; since my political sympathies are other than Bell's, who approvingly cites Charles Murray on the sources of public evil, I might not unjustly be charged with bias of my own. And Bell is not an inadept storyteller. So you may well enjoy it where I did not.