It's the attention to detail that puts this book over the top for me. Just picking it up you can tell it's a beautiful, fascinating account of the lives of Marie & Pierre Curie (as well as her other love interests and children), and though it's full of hard science that's balanced with quotations from letters and interviews that make it all tangible. As far as the detail goes, I don't just mean the personal touches Redniss adds with the interviews, but also that her very artistic process using a font face she designed from New York Library manuscripts and cyanotype prints that make each drawing seem to have a radioactive glow...plus the book itself also glows in the dark.

Redniss also makes this more than a simple love story - it's complicated by the historical fallout (pun intended) of the Curies' research and questions around science, ethics, and personal responsibility.

This was the first book I've picked up recently that made me realize that not all books are going to work electronically - there's no way you could read this on an iPad even if it were available and have the same experience.