I recently finished 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 and all I can say is “eh.”
GoodReads description:
The
Periodic Table is one of man's crowning scientific achievements. But it's also
a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The
infectious tales and astounding details in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON follow
carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history,
finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently)
mad scientists who discovered them. We learn that Marie Curie used to provoke
jealousy in colleagues' wives when she'd invite them into closets to see her
glow-in-the-dark experiments. And that Lewis and Clark swallowed mercury
capsules across the country and their campsites are still detectable by the
poison in the ground. Why did Gandhi hate iodine? Why did the Japanese kill
Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium? And why did tellurium lead to the most
bizarre gold rush in history?
So the description makes the
book sound downright amazing which is why I bought it in the first place. Unfortunately, I was fooled. I was expecting the author to describe the various
elements of the periodic table and then show the quirky ways they popped up in
history, and while Kean did do that every now and again, I felt as though he
spent way too much time on the actual science of the elements. Now far be it
for me to tell an author how to write their book, but Kean really should have
focused the book on the personal stories because those
were the parts that I was enthralled with. And I know what you’re thinking, “Brittany,
the book is about the periodic table, of course it’s going to be about science.”
To which I say, “It’s also supposed to be about tales of madness and love, its
right there in the title!” And I’m not begrudging that the author wanted to
teach the world about the periodic table, in fact I was actually looking
forward to learning something. I am after all the person who read The Speckled Monster, , a historic tale
about small pox, by Jennifer Lee Carrell
just because I was interested in learning more about one of the deadliest
diseases known to man. On a side note, I highly recommend The Speckled Monster it was fascinating to learn about how inoculations
were started. Seriously, it amazes me that it even started, today’s equivalent
would be, “Here let me inject you with the HIV virus to prevent you from getting
AIDS.” Craziness!
Anyways, like I was saying
about The Disappearing Spoon, I just
wish there would have been more interesting tales and fun facts along with all
the science mumbo jumbo. Although to be fair, as a history major and lawyer
science isn’t really my thing. I’m sure that the lawyer/chemist that I work
with would fall in love with this book; mostly because she’ll probably understand
everything that went way over my head.
Bottom line: I was literally
counting out the pages and chapters until I was done, which is never a good
sign. So while I do recommend this book to all the science lovers out there, I
suggest anyone who does not have firm grip on chemistry and physics to steer
clear.
And onto the next . . . I just
finished, and fell in love with, The Pillars
of the Earth by Ken Follett.
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