Matthew Shindell is curator of planetary science and exploration at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
Absorbing . . . [Shindell] uses the researcher's life to show how a conscientious chemist navigated the cold war. . . . This fine biography wonderfully shows how Urey's scientific contributions led chemistry in new directions, including to the Moon -- and, in depicting the life of a leading scientist, Shindell probes the complex interplay of faith, values and politics in the United States. -- Nature Harold Urey was simultaneously a towering figure in American science yet never quite fit into the categories imposed on him. Shindell vibrantly revives Urey's story of science, politics, religion, and humanity across the American century. --Michael D. Gordin, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Princeton University Nature One cannot understand the origins of nuclear power and weaponry, of planetary exploration, or of our modern ideas about earth history and climate change without knowing the contributions of Harold Urey. Shindell's meticulously researched and riveting account of Urey's life and work traces the intellectual, political, and spiritual struggles of a man whose career binds together many of the major scientific and political events of the twentieth century. --David Grinspoon, author of Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto Nature This is an elegantly written and smartly researched biography of a major figure whose contributions to twentieth-century science have been inexplicably understudied. As with the best of this sort of biographical exploration, Shindell here crafts a rich historical narrative in which the individual subject provides an opportunity to investigate and understand large-scale social and cultural developments in a fine-grained way. The book is a serious contribution to the field, as well as paradigmatic of how the history of chemistry can appeal to a wide audience. --Matthew Stanley, author of Einstein's War: How Relativity Triumphed amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I Nature