Books

  “Writ­ing biogra­phies about peo­ple from dif­fer­ent times and cul­tures can have chal­lenges, but try­ing to explain physics — espe­cial­ly Wu’s spe­cial­iza­tion, beta decay — in a pic­ture-book biog­ra­phy cer­tain­ly ups the ante. Robe­son sur­mounts these almost effort­less­ly, get­ting to the heart of Wu’s pro­fes­sion­al life and sim­ply detail­ing her many accom­plish­ments, as well as inform­ing her audi­ence how Wu was slight­ed when it came to awards like the Nobel Prize, with male col­leagues tak­ing the hon­ors. The tex­t’s acces­si­bil­i­ty is sup­port­ed and enhanced by Huang’s col­lage-style art­work that cap­tures Wu’s ded­i­ca­tion and will­ing­ness to take on lead­er­ship roles both in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty and in lead­ing polit­i­cal protests in Chi­na. Wu Chien Shi­ung’s sto­ry is remark­able — and so is the way this book does it jus­tice. A short biog­ra­phy and a dic­tio­nary of physics terms is append­ed.” (Book­list, starred review)