"Campos’ interest is firmly in intellectual history, and the way ideas spread between disciplines, laboratories, and the past and present. By focusing on a particular element, Campos convincingly puts what may traditionally be considered an object of the physical sciences at the center of a history of biology. Therefore, while historians of twentieth century biology are Campos’ main audience, the book will be of interest to those with an interest in the history of physics, radioactivity, and inquiries into the origins of life. And while Campos does not engage directly with emerging scholarship on ‘new materialism’, Radium and the Secret of Life implicitly demonstrates its relevance to historians of life sciences. . . . In revealing previously unknown connections between the sciences of radioactivity and heredity, Radium and the Secret of Life demonstrates the remarkable productivity of metaphor in generating new understandings and approaches between disciplines, and invites us to reconsider our understanding of what it means to be alive."