The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads by Michelle Legro

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Behind the Bomb
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Behind the Bomb

From janitor to chemist, the women of Oak Ridge worked hard and talked little.

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The Age of Edison: Radical Invention and the Illuminated World
The Age of Edison: Radical Invention and the Illuminated World

A brief history of giving the people what they wanted, or why the lightbulb was a mere cog in the machinery of total illumination.

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Emily Roebling and How the Brooklyn Bridge Was Built
Emily Roebling and How the Brooklyn Bridge Was Built

What wire-walkers and medical mysteries have to do with the world’s deepest pit and the secret female engineer behind an architectural icon.

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Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: Tracing the Evolution of Women’s Rights in a Victorian Lady’s Journals
Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: Tracing the Evolution of Women’s Rights in a Victorian Lady’s Journals

How the most private of frontiers became a public front for the gender dialogue.

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Free Radicals: How Anarchy and Serendipity Fueled Science, from Newton to Tesla to Steve Jobs
Free Radicals: How Anarchy and Serendipity Fueled Science, from Newton to Tesla to Steve Jobs

How Goethe fueled Tesla, why Newton pricked his own eye, and other lessons in breaking the rules of science.

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The Lady and Her Monsters: Real-Life Frankensteins and How Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece Came to Life
The Lady and Her Monsters: Real-Life Frankensteins and How Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece Came to Life

The experiments and reanimations of Mary Shelley, Luigi Galvani, and Giovanni Aldini.

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Trinity: A Graphic History of the Atomic Bomb
Trinity: A Graphic History of the Atomic Bomb

From Marie Curie to Hiroshima, or what uranium isotopes have to do with moral philosophy.

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7 Lessons on the Creative Life from the U.S. Forest Service
7 Lessons on the Creative Life from the U.S. Forest Service

Simple rules to follow when you’re lost in the woods, literally and creatively.

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Chasing Venus: When the World Came Together to Measure the Heavens
Chasing Venus: When the World Came Together to Measure the Heavens

What Ben Franklin, Sweden, and a lucky break in the clouds have to do with the distance to the Sun.

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Dating Advice from Dickens: A Collection of Victorian Vignettes
Dating Advice from Dickens: A Collection of Victorian Vignettes

A “Manly Young Lady” and a “Poetical Young Gentleman” walk into a bar.

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