Historically fascinating and scientifically rigorous, Plutonium tells the story of a rare and exotic element put to deadly use in atomic bombs, from its discovery to the present day. From the discovery of uranium in 1789 to the Manhattan Project, from Nazi efforts to build a nuclear bomb to the cold war between the USA and USSR, Bernstein tells the important story of one of nature's rarest elements, put to deadly use in nuclear weapons. Along the way, he paints revealing pen portraits of scientists who helped discover the element and produce it in vast quantities during World War II—from Marie Curie to Robert Oppenheimer and beyond.