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Let me preface this by saying that I have a better command of chemistry than the average person. I don't consider myself a great chemist, but with my current job, you could make a case for my career being chemistry. With that said, I think this is a very fun-factable book in the way that when you read it, the stories are so interesting that you immediately want to go tell someone about the weird little thing you just learned. Overall I think the science is pretty accessible, but towards the end, it got a bit too heavy even for someone working in STEM (partially because I do not like reading about too heavy science in my free time since it feels like work). I think if you consider yourself a science person in any way, this book will be more of a light read for you, but someone without a science background may find it slightly more challenging not to be overwhelmed. I truly think it's easily accessible to those who passed high school chemistry.
Uneven and only fitfully engaging, The Disappearing Spoon is less a history of the periodic table and how scientists have come to understand elemental matter than it is a collection of facts about those elements and anecdotes about the various researchers who've discovered them.
Sam Kean doesn't really have the knack for explaining (or re-explaining) scientific concepts to people who haven't studied chemistry or physics since secondary school, and relies too much on clunky metaphors and irritating anthropomorphisms. (For example, Kean writes that stars are "[d]esperate to maintain high temperatures." Stars are not sentient. They do not have feelings. Even more jaw-droppingly asinine, though, are sentences like "In addition to Haber's being a Jew, Germany excommunicated him because he had become passé." Do I need to break down why this is, at an absolute minimum, a tacky way of putting things?) He never actually fully explains how the periodic table works.
More damningly to me, as a historian, is that Kean tries to write from a perspective which is determinedly presentist. His interest in the past seems to primarily stem from wanting to know the backstory of the discovery and refinement of certain scientific concepts, rather than any desire to engage with the history of science as an evolving conceptual system which is inevitably shaped by those who practice it. For a man who seems fascinated by the universe on scales both macro and micro, Kean seems profoundly uninterested in the human.
Sam Kean doesn't really have the knack for explaining (or re-explaining) scientific concepts to people who haven't studied chemistry or physics since secondary school, and relies too much on clunky metaphors and irritating anthropomorphisms. (For example, Kean writes that stars are "[d]esperate to maintain high temperatures." Stars are not sentient. They do not have feelings. Even more jaw-droppingly asinine, though, are sentences like "In addition to Haber's being a Jew, Germany excommunicated him because he had become passé." Do I need to break down why this is, at an absolute minimum, a tacky way of putting things?) He never actually fully explains how the periodic table works.
More damningly to me, as a historian, is that Kean tries to write from a perspective which is determinedly presentist. His interest in the past seems to primarily stem from wanting to know the backstory of the discovery and refinement of certain scientific concepts, rather than any desire to engage with the history of science as an evolving conceptual system which is inevitably shaped by those who practice it. For a man who seems fascinated by the universe on scales both macro and micro, Kean seems profoundly uninterested in the human.
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Surprisingly entertaining for a 12.5 hour long audiobook about the periodic table
informative
medium-paced
adventurous
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
informative
medium-paced
challenging
informative
slow-paced
I am torn on this book because about half of the chapters were really interesting but the other half were so laborious and almost textbook-like I could hardly get through them. It is much less a book of stories and just a book of information about the periodic table.
I GENUINELY loved how Sam Kean used humor and oddball details to cover the 200 year history of the periodic table.
I would definitely recommend listening to the audiobook version because you can hear his passion and plan joy in having put this work together.
This read felt like that high school teacher that was way cooler than you wanted to admit you liked and drummed up your curiosity about the chemical science.
BONUS: Kean was very aware of the gender and race bias of the chemicals evolution and makes A LOT of room to bring in folks of color and women denied their recognition cause of White Dominance in the fields of study.
I would definitely recommend listening to the audiobook version because you can hear his passion and plan joy in having put this work together.
This read felt like that high school teacher that was way cooler than you wanted to admit you liked and drummed up your curiosity about the chemical science.
BONUS: Kean was very aware of the gender and race bias of the chemicals evolution and makes A LOT of room to bring in folks of color and women denied their recognition cause of White Dominance in the fields of study.