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A review by frogbone
Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants by John Drury Clark
funny
informative
slow-paced
4.5
this is an interesting one, because it's littered with fabulous anecdotes and remarks about some of the most malicious and dangerous chemical substances you can find on earth, and pretty much all of these are delightful and illuminating about what being a working chemist was like in those days. but it is set against a background that is a discussion of all the chemistries that were tried for propellants at some point and then discarded, and that is a substantially drier subject.
the former is readily accessible to anyone, and indeed i found myself sharing plenty of snippets of this book with others.
the latter will pretty much only be accessible to college chemistry students and up, who will find it informative, if substantially out of date. if you have that background, i would say, go for it. if you don't, it might be advisable to skim it a bit when he gets a little too in the weeds on some of this stuff.
the former is readily accessible to anyone, and indeed i found myself sharing plenty of snippets of this book with others.
the latter will pretty much only be accessible to college chemistry students and up, who will find it informative, if substantially out of date. if you have that background, i would say, go for it. if you don't, it might be advisable to skim it a bit when he gets a little too in the weeds on some of this stuff.