Necessary Madness?

If there is one criticism of John Monahan's They Called Me Mad, it is the length-it is not long enough.

The book begins with a discussion of Archimedes (who is probably the first person to conceive of, and maybe attempt to implement a "death ray"),it then moves on to alchemy (misguided efforts to transmute lead into gold that laid the foundations for modern chemistry), dissection (from grave robbery to modern medicine), and the work of Nikola Tesla (which includes but is not limited to radio, remote control, and alternating current; Tesla, like Archimedes, had ideas about "death rays").

The book concludes with two related discussions: nuclear energy (with an emphasis on the work of Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer) and and the development of missiles, summarizing the "space race" between the United States and Soviet Union, and the pivotal role played by Wernher von Braun.