| The Disappearing Spoon: and Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements |  | Author: Sam Kean
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 15,434
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0316051640
Dewey Decimal Number: 546
EAN: 9780316051644
Publication Date: August 5, 2010 (New: Last 30 Days)
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| Customer Reviews:
I'm reminded to take my dose of lithium August 23, 2010
Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA)
"Between hydrogen at the top left and the man-made impossibilities lurking along the bottom, you can find bubbles, bombs, money, alchemy, petty politics, history, poison, crime and love. Even some science." - Sam Kean (stating perhaps the briefest possible synopsis of his THE DISAPPEARING SPOON
"Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius." - Sam Kean
In THE DISAPPEARING SPOON, science writer Sam Kean attempts to do what Bill Bryson does with his magnificent A Short History of Nearly Everything, i.e. tap dance with humor over a wide-ranging subject for the entertainment and edification of the reader. In the Bryson's case, the arena is, well, nearly everything, while Kean's is a much more constricted stage, the Periodic Table of the Elements. The fact that the former performs more nimbly shouldn't dissuade one from reading the latter's book, which is, for the most part, a work of popular science that's likely to be both engaging and largely comprehensible to the sweaty masses. (It's currently in the mid-90s outside. Schvitzy work, this.)
Sam doesn't proceed through the squares of the Periodic Table in an orderly progression as one might progress across the squares of a hopscotch court from start to finish, but rather jumps around randomly, the element of the moment being determined by a larger context whether that be its relation to medicine, money, poisons, explosive weaponry, temperature, tools of measurement, gold rushes, human insanity, misguided science, artistic output, or the politics of the Nobel prize.
Occasionally, the author becomes a bit too arcane and the reader not heavily grounded in chemistry (or physics!) may find his/her eyes glazing over, such as when he discusses bubble chemistry, superatoms, quantum dots, the alpha constant, or electron jumps between orbitals. And when the narrative became wrapped up in the personalities and rivalries of the investigators involved in the discovery of the transuranic elements, I had to ask myself if I cared much about the soap opera. The answer was "no." Generally speaking, however, the tales Kean has to tell are interesting and worth storing away in memory to retell around the office coffee maker or as part of interesting small talk at the next cocktail party (even if there are no chemistry geeks in attendance). Who knows? It may be useful to rescue a lagging conversation by declaring that the longest word ever to appear legitimately in an English document not for the purpose of setting a length record names a protein in the tobacco mosaic virus:
"Acetyl seryl tyrosyl seryl iso leucyl threonyl seryl prolyl serylglutaminyl phenyl alanyl valyl phenyl alanyl leucyl seryl seryl valyltryptophyl alanyl aspartyl prolyl isoleucyl glutamyl leucyl leucylasparaginyl valyl cysteinyl threonyl seryl seryl leucyl glycylasparaginyl glutaminyl phenyl alanyl glutaminyl threonyl glutaminylglutaminyl alanyl arginyl threonyl threonyl glutaminyl valylglutaminyl glutaminyl phenyl alanyl seryl glutaminyl valyl tryptophyllysyl prolyl phenyl alanyl prolyl glutaminyl seryl threonyl valylarginyl phenyl alanyl prolyl glycyl aspartyl valyl tyrosyl lysyl valyltyrosyl arginyl tyrosyl asparaginyl alanyl valyl leucyl aspartylprolyl leucyl isoleucyl threonyl alanyl leucyl leucyl glycyl threonylphenyl alanyl aspartyl threonyl arginyl asparaginyl arginyl isoleucylisoleucyl glutamyl valyl glutamyl asparaginyl glutaminyl glutaminylseryl prolyl threonyl threonyl alanyl glutamyl threonyl leucylaspartyl alanyl threonyl arginyl arginyl valyl aspartyl aspartylalanyl threonyl valyl alanyl isoleucyl arginyl seryl alanyl asparaginylisoleucyl asparaginyl leucyl valyl asparaginyl glutamyl leucyl valylarginyl glycyl threonyl glycyl leucyl tyrosyl asparaginyl glutaminylasparaginyl threonyl phenyl alanyl glutamyl seryl methionyl serylglycyl leucyl valyl tryptophyl threonyl seryl alanyl prolyl alanylserine"
Finally, for a reason I can't really explain, one of the more fascinating paragraphs in the book was that describing the action of lithium to ameliorate mood swings in manic depressives.
I'm always happy to report on any volume that increases my knowledge about the world around me without being too impenetrable. I wish THE DISAPPEARING SPOON had been available to me in high school Chem 1A. So, despite a sporadic unevenness in presentation, I'm recommending it with four stars.
 Too off-target a lot of the time August 16, 2010
David Getling (Berlin (at the moment))
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The initial review of this book led me to believe that it would be jam-packed with interesting history and facts about every single element. There were some interesting facts, such as beryllium tastes of sugar. However there was FAR TOO MUCH digression. I didn't want [or need] a primer on quantum mechanics or radioactive decay. I would have found it much more interesting to read about phosphorus' initial isolation and use in matches, than about its vital role in DNA. I could carry on and on in this vein.
This isn't a bad book, and I'm sure many readers will learn a lot from the material I din't want. But for a book that is meant to focus on the elements I found it very disappointing. I suspect the book I hoped to see has yet to be written - now that would be inspiring!
A good read August 16, 2010
Crustas
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A good popular science book. UK readers will no doubt be annoyed by the occasional use of US measures such as the pound and ºF rather than SI units. Also readers without a grounding in chemistry may be mystified by the numerous references to electron shell filling and how this effects the properties of the various elements. However, the historic anecdotes are both interesting and in many cases amusing making this a good read.
 A guide like no other August 11, 2010
Pipistrel (Oxford United Kingdom)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This wonderful book fills a gap. There are several excellent volumes about the elements, ranging from Hazel Rossotti's encyclopedic handbook, 'Diverse Atoms', John Emsley's lab-bench handbook 'The Elements' and his fuller and less technical 'Nature's Building Blocks' to Theodore Gray's lovely picture book 'The Elements', but nobody has brought together such a wealth of stories about the discoverers of the elements, their loves, hates, triumphs and disasters. Mary Weeks' out-of-print 'Discovery of the Elements' was not half as exciting. Sometimes the author has sensationalized things, for example calling Mendeleev 'an anarchist' (his life may have been somewhat anarchic, but his politics were Czarist). The human stories are backed up with 'potted biographies' of the elements themselves, made intelligible to the non-chemist reader, using the periodic system to give structure and explanation. This is a throughly readable book, which should be informative to chemists and should persuade non-chemists that there is a great deal more to the subject than they ever imagined.
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