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by: Ken Silverstein  List Price: $13.95 Amazon.com's Price: $11.16 You Save: $2.79 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 621.483092 EAN: 9780812966602 ISBN: 0812966600 Label: Villard Manufacturer: Villard Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 209 Publication Date: January 11, 2005 Publisher: Villard Release Date: January 11, 2005 Studio: Villard Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science. While he was working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David’s obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed. Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. Following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental emergency that put his town’s forty thousand suburbanites at risk. The EPA ended up burying his lab at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. This offbeat account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris has the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - A warning perhaps?I recommend this book. It comes across as a quick and fun read about a nerdy kid and some of the equally nerdy parents and adults who should have been keeping an eye on him, but it teaches a lesson about what can happen when some dedicated person goes to far on their own personal mission of discovery. Some of the other reviewers criticize Silverstein for including the background material on the nuclear power industry, but I think it put the events in the book into the right context, ... Read More Rating: - The Radioactive Boy ScoutFantastic true story. "The Radioactive Boy Scout", brings back memories of my days when I built and shot a rocket off in my bed room, set the bed on fire. Obtained a neon sign transformer and built a Tesla Coil, scaring the neighbor lady next door to death. She had a heart attack. How in Boy Scouts, three of us ditches a Saturday project of delivering political fliers. We through them in a vacant field, and took off for better things to do. We here in Michigan do it all! Yes this book is a ... Read More Rating:  - Excellent BookThis is an excellent non-fiction quick read at just under 200 pages. It is a true story about a teenager, David Hahn, who ventured to build a nuclear breeder reactor with little protection from radioactivity. He used a potting shed as a laboratory and a few old college textbooks from his dad for knowledge on radioactive materials. David became increasingly secluded at school as he continued to experiment with dangerous chemistry. His grades dropped, and no one believed he could do anything to raise ... Read More Rating:  - From his former ScoutmasterI was David's scoutmaster when he was preparing for his Eagle Scout Board of Review. I was to contact five registered adult Scout leaders, who would comprise the Board. One prospective adult told me he could not sit on the Board, because "something happened". I learned that David and some friends were stopped by the cavaliering Clinton Township (Michigan) Police, who were randomly stopping teens and searching their cars for stolen tires. David was not allowed to keep his ... Read More Rating: - The Atom is Our FriendThere's something not quite serious about The Radioactive Boy Scout. The book jacket has a cartoonish design and each page has a little atomic symbol by the page number. It's a small book, almost like a children's reader. It seemed to me as if it would be a quick, fun read. Well, it was quick, all right. Author Ken Silverstein originally wrote this as an article for Harper's Magazine, according to the blurb. The article has been padded with several chapters on nuclear power, chemistry, and the ... Read More 
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