A review by inkfire
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

This book was super interesting and I learned a lot about chemistry and physics and history while I was reading. But there were also a ton of biases embedded in the narrative that didn't seem to be based on anything real.

Like the idea that the Periodic table was justified by research after it was made because the one we have now is as correct as it is possible to be, and any other arrangement of elements would therefore be wrong. Which he then disagreed with in the last chapter. It was weird.

It was all very interesting, though.