bannedfrombookclub 's review for:

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean

3.0

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The concept is 4 stars, but the execution is 2 stars so I've averaged it out overall. A lot of interesting information but poorly organised and with an unclear focus.

Some stories are approached from a personality perspective and others from a science perspective and for simplicity's sake it should really be one or the other. Better yet - it should be chronological because we jump from Marie curie playing glow in the dark in a closet to the latest way to shoot photons at protons (or whatever) within a couple of paragraphs.