Reviews for The radiance of France

The average rating for The radiance of France based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-06-02 00:00:00 John Masters First, confession time: I didn't actually make it all the way through this book. The detailed discussions of reactor construction, the wars between technocrats in favour of different designs, etc. etc. were a little much for me to process. And to be fair, my disappointment is mostly my fault, since I assumed I would be reading an overview of the early years of France's foray into nuclear power, or possibly even about French nuclear testing (the thing I was really interested in when I came across this book). Instead, 'The Radiance of France' deals almost exclusively with gas-graphite reactors, and good lord, there's only so much I can read about gas-graphite reactors before my head starts to spin. Still, I did respond well to Hecht's approach to her topic, and that's why it gets three stars instead of two. She examines technology and culture (specifically, national identity) in a way that emphasizes the ways in which they played off each other, rather than taking a position on whether one influenced the other. Aside from that, as she mentions in the introduction, her research was heavily grounded in oral interviews with people who had been involved with France's nuclear projects, allowing her to produce work that is more well-rounded and (I think) generally far superior to what she would have come up with if she had limited herself to archival documents and published sources from the period. Definitely look into this book if you're interested in a case study of how technological, cultural and political histories intersect, AND have the brain power to process a thorough and detailed discussion of nuclear technology.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-01 00:00:00 Brooke Sims Absolutely brilliant.