Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry

"One of the rewarding things about [this] novel . . . is the total absence of any predictable generation-gap bitterness. Beyond lost innocence the book is about a problem that troubles the age-a sense of having pursued wrong priorities too hotly, an awareness of the neglect of life and love that results."

"If there is a theme to this novel, it's the emotional charge that pushes every man toward his intellectual journey. What makes it so readable is McMahon's humanizing touch. . . . This is a touching and perceptive first novel."

"Humorous and generous yet sometimes disconcertingly fatalistic, McMahon's storytelling is based on an irresistible curiosity about how the world works.... His narratives are full of colorful background detail and impulsive detours; they're equally respectful of human dedication and nature's haphazard way of bestowing rewards and punishments. In keeping with this freewheeling spirit, McMahon has a style that manages to animate not only the people in a novel but its objects and landscapes."

"[McMahon's novels] combine sophisticated scientific lore with a well-developed sense of human-ness. They are learned, funny, spiritual, and sexy. It would not be disgraceful to compare them with the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Indeed, McMahon is a kind of Yankee magic realist, mixing the fantastic with the ordinary so seamlessly that one can't finally decided which is which--the search for nature's secrets and the search for love prove equally intoxicating. Written largely in a plain style--the prose soars only when a character is drunk on the pursuit of scientific truth--they are deceptively light, a cabinet of wonders and of spirit."

“As a tale of original sin in science, Principles echoes predecessors such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H. G. Wells’s Invisible Man, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’ and ‘The Birthmark,’ among others.”

"[McMahon] is so much less well known than he deserves to be. His later novels, increasingly wry and exaggerated, bear a family resemblance to those of Kurt Vonnegut and to certain of Saul Bellow's works. Yet there is an underlying sweetness to McMahon's writing, a wholehearted engagement with those elements of scientific wonder that most resemble artistic creativity."--Bookforum