Children of radium : a buried inheritance
Dunthorne, Joe2026
Book
Joe Dunthorne had always wanted to write about his great-grandfather, Siegfried: an eccentric scientist who invented radioactive toothpaste and a Jewish refugee from the Nazis who returned to Germany under cover of the Berlin Olympics to pull off a heist on his own home. The only problem was that Siegfried had already written the book of his life - an unpublished, two-thousand page memoir so dry and rambling that none of his living descendants had managed to read it. And, as it turned out when Joe finally read the manuscript himself, it told a very different story from the one he thought he knew. Thus begins a mystery which stretches across the twentieth century and around the world, from Berlin to Ankara, New York, Glasgow and eventually London - a mystery about the production of something much more sinister than toothpaste.
Main title:
Children of radium : a buried inheritance / Joe Dunthorne.
Author:
Dunthorne, Joe, author
Imprint:
London : Penguin Books, 2026.
Collation:
220 pages ; 20 cm
Notes:
Originally published: New York: Scribner, 2025.
ISBN:
9780241517475 (pbk)
Dewey class:
623.445092B MER623.445092 DUN
Language:
English
Subject:
Merzbacher, Siegfried, 1883-1971Merzbacher, Siegfried, 1883-1971 -- FamilyChemical weapons -- Germany -- History -- 20th centuryGases, Asphyxiating and poisonous -- War use -- Germany -- History -- 20th centuryWarfare and DefenceMemoirsEuropean historySocial & cultural historyMilitary history: post-WW2 conflictsMilitary engineering
BRN:
4259490