Finally a biography that gives the man Fermi the spotlight he deserves in the history of XX century, like the Isaacson biography did for Einstein. Highly recommended

A wonderfully comprehensive and accessible biography of Italian-born Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, who emigrated to the US to escape anti-Semitism just before the war and went on to play a key part in The Manhattan Project and the development of nuclear weaponry in his adopted country. It’s an absorbing and well-written account that explores the man and the science. There’s certainly some difficult physics here to come to grips with but it’s mostly presented in a reader-friendly way and certainly doesn't detract from the overall enjoyment of the narrative. I learnt so much from this book – until now Fermi had just been a name to me – and I found this very readable book both illuminating and thought-provoking.

I loved this biography of Enrico Fermi -- he's now a hero of mine. It's always difficult to write a good, readable biography of someone as important as Fermi. Too often, they put too much emphasis on the professional and neglect to see the subject as a person. If the subject's expertise is in a complex area, the reader is often left wading through hundreds of pages without real understanding of the subject's importance.

The authors beautifully avoided all these pitfalls and give us a complete portrait of Fermi both as a man and a scientist. You can't help but find him very likable. Because the authors understand physics they are able throughout the book to give us clear explanations of difficult question Fermi studied and help us understand enough to see the importance and how Fermi's theories and experiments worked.

In dealing with Fermi, or many other physicists of the time, you can't ignore the question of creating the atom bomb. Happily the authors' great writing style and fact-based approach allows them to tell this story without political opinion, or hand-wringing. It makes taking on this difficult subject interesting instead of upsetting.

Quite simply this is one of the best biogra[hies of anyone I have read!