When We Cease to Understand the World (by Benjamin Labatut)

This book was written by Dutch-Chilean author Benjamin Labatut and translated into English by Adrian Nathan West. It's an exploration of discoveries in quantum mechanics by such figures as Einstein, Schrödinger, and Heisenberg, and each part (ranging in length from pretty short to essentially a novella-within-a-novel) gets increasingly more fictionalized.

It's unlike anything I've ever read. I've always been fascinated by theories about the nature of the universe (from The Arrow of Time to string theory) and I learned a lot from this book. But on top of the factual stuff, this really delves into the human element. How invention and science can change the world in a good way but also led to atomic weapons, mustard gas in the trenches, Zyklon B.

I'm going to have to sit with this one for a bit - and of course discuss it in the Tournament of Books. But I really liked it.