Thank you NetGalley and Basic Books for the ARC.

DNF

I was initially drawn to this book by the title, cover art and description. As I started reading it, I realized some concepts were over my head and it would require a lot of patience and work to get through it.

I was managing up until about 20% completion, and that is where the knowledge base needed for me to understand became insurmountable. I did not go into this thinking this would be a layman’s term book, but I also did not think it would be so over my head to be impossible for me to finish. This is my first DNF.

If I had been able to keep up with the terminology and concepts it would have been a 4-star book for me. My rating and inability to complete does not reflect on the author or content, simply my shortcoming in being able to take it all in and understand.

Imagine you've gone to the bookstore to hear an author read from their new book that you believe is a history of the people who collectively figured out all the theories and breakthroughs that led humanity to the ability to create atom bombs. You're hoping for an entertaining evening with some eye-opening scientific tidbits, but mostly a story about interesting scientists, including your personal favorite, Marie Curie. You sit down with some anticipation, just to slowly realize that you've gotten it all wrong and have ended up in a graduate symposium on nuclear physics.

Your fellow audience members must be PhDs, they're jotting down equations as the author laboriously chalks them on the board. He explains how each formula implies certain characteristics about the fundamental building blocks of matter and how that then begets additional theories. Nobel prizes are mentioned, and scientists are cited as being on the right track or wrong track, even some WWII-era politics are referenced, but mostly it's way over your head and you find yourself nodding off and wondering how to politely slip out the back before the end of the lecture.

That's how I found this remarkably erudite history of the theories and ideas surrounding the composition of the atom, what radioactivity is, how fission and fusion work, and how the design of the periodic table implies the required existence of certain elements (or does it?).

While Destroyer of Worlds is billed as being " centered on an extraordinary cast of characters" in fact the book is much more the "story of the physics that deciphered the atom and created the hydrogen bomb" with formula, visualizations, graphs, tables, and other data shared and more or less explained for the layman.

I was overwhelmed. If you're not well versed in nuclear physics, this is probably not the book for you on this important subject.