{"product_id":"books-half-life-by-jillian-cantor","title":"Half Life","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe USA Today bestselling author of In\u003cbr\u003e Another Time reimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie\u003cbr\u003e using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that\u003cbr\u003e mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for\u003cbr\u003e science if she'd made a different choice.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn Poland in 1891, Marie Curie\u003cbr\u003e (then Marya Sklodowska) was engaged to a budding mathematician, Kazimierz\u003cbr\u003e Zorawski. But when his mother insisted she was too poor and not good enough, he\u003cbr\u003e broke off the engagement. A heartbroken Marya left Poland for Paris, where she\u003cbr\u003e would attend the Sorbonne to study chemistry and physics. Eventually Marie\u003cbr\u003e Curie would go on to change the course of science forever and be the first\u003cbr\u003e woman to win a Nobel Prize.But what if she had made a\u003cbr\u003e different choice?\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhat if she had stayed in Poland,\u003cbr\u003e married Kazimierz at the age of twenty-four, and never attended the Sorbonne or\u003cbr\u003e discovered radium? What if she had chosen a life of domesticity with a constant\u003cbr\u003e hunger for knowledge in Russian Poland where education for women was restricted,\u003cbr\u003e instead of studying science in Paris and meeting Pierre Curie?\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEntwining Marie Curie's real story\u003cbr\u003e with Marya Zorawska's fictional one, Half Life explores loves lost and\u003cbr\u003e destinies unfulfilled--and probes issues of loyalty and identity, gender and\u003cbr\u003e class, motherhood and sisterhood, fame and anonymity, scholarship and\u003cbr\u003e knowledge. Through parallel contrasting versions of Marya's life, Jillian\u003cbr\u003e Cantor's unique historical novel asks what would have happened if a great\u003cbr\u003e scientific mind was denied opportunity and access to education. It examines how\u003cbr\u003e the lives of one remarkable woman and the people she loved - as well as the world\u003cbr\u003e at large and course of science and history--might have been irrevocably changed\u003cbr\u003e in ways both great and small.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"World of Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53672612331793,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780062969880.jpg?v=1781520488","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/books-half-life-by-jillian-cantor","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}