Synopses & Reviews
Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry: A Novel is a startling and highly original work of fiction, which paradoxically combines the lightest gaiety with the deepest sense of corruption. Told through he eyes of Timmy McLaurin, whose father is an atomic physicist, the novel captures the special excitement intellectual, sexual, emotional which surrounded the Los Alamos laboratories in 1943-1945 and which caught up so many men and woman in a scientific project of terrifying import. For Timmy, the atmospheric excitement was directly associated with Maryann, his father's beautiful, elusive mistress. But, for some reason, the vitality, the feeling of the community vanished. Was it because of Maryann's disappearance? Had she been the inspiration for the technological triumphs at Los Alamos? Through the eyes of a child now grown, Thomas McMahon extracts the bittersweet mood of the most remarkable collective effort in the history of science and conveys an overwhelming sense of destiny good and evil.
Review
"From the somber afternoon of the nuclear age, two physicists, father and son, look back at its dawn. The elder had helped to build the bomb. The younger had been blighted by it....The chemistry in Principles...is not of science, but of flesh and blood." Time
Review
"How could there, in so lunatic a setting as Los Alamos, have been so much warmth and truth of human presence?...Mr. McMahon's enterprise is of considerable moral and literary value." George Steiner, The New Yorker
Review
"Brilliant and important." Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Review
"Genuinely original." C.P. Snow
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"Strangely compelling." J.P. Priestly
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"An extraordinary novel for its author to have written." William Cooper, Nature
Synopsis
What was life like for the scientists working at Los Alamos? Thomas McMahon imagines this life through the wide eyes of young Tim MacLaurin, the thirteen-year-old son of an MIT physicist who, inspired by a young woman named Maryann, worked on the project. Filled with the sensuous excitement of scientific discovery and the outrageous behavior of people pushed beyond their limits, Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry is a beautifully written coming-of-age story that explores the mysterious connections between love and work, inspiration and history.
About the Author
At the time of his death at age 55 on Valentine's Day 1999, Thomas McMahon was the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Mechanics and professor of biology at Harvard University. In addition to his scientific work, where he founded the field of biomechanics, McMahon found the time to publish three novels to wide acclaim: Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry: A Novel (1971); McKay's Bees (1979); and Loving Little Egypt (1987), which won the 1988 Rosenthal Award from the American Academy Arts and Letters. The last two novels were adapted for the stage. His last novel, Ira Foxglove, was published posthumously.