The Disappearing Spoon [Paperback]

This book has come under a bit of criticism on these pages, seemingly for having an American author. Whilst it's true many of the measurements quoted are imperial, which is a bit of an anathema to modern science (I'm not sure many chemists use Fahrenheit these days), it doesn't take much too much effort to 'translate' them into metric. Since this is a popular science book aimed originally at a US audience, the American terminology and weights and measures, is more than forgiveable. If you really can't abide the thought of Jello or Hershey bars, and only ever give your height in cm and weight in Kg, then by all means pass on this book, but if you do, you are missing out an a treat.

At first I wasn't convinced. Kean's jovial writing style does grate at first. It's like he's trying to be Bill Bryson's (who gets the inevitable name check on the front cover) hip young nephew. Then there was a confusing, arm-waving description of electron configuration in atoms, that probably only makes sense if you already understand how it works (short of forcing my wife to read it, I can't easily verify this). But things rapidly get better. Kean style settles down (or I got used to it) and after that his descriptions and analogies are pretty much spot on.

There is very little hard science in this book. For that I recommend (as does Kean) John Emsley's Nature's Building Blocks). Instead Kean treats us to a social and industrial history of many of the elements, and the unknown (to most) ways in which they are important in our everyday lives. Kean wanders rather haphazardly through the table, often discussing elements that are far apart on the table together in the same chapter. This allows him to vary his discussion points from the traditional HHeLiBeBCNOF approach, making for a less proscribed read. There book also contains a fair amount of biography of the world's scientific giants. The rivalries, the friendships, the mistakes and the serendipitous discoveries, of some of the world's greatest Chemists and Physicists, are laid out in an informative and entertaining manner. In the final chapter Kean pontificates on the future of table, laying out some innovations in science, the like of which I hadn't heard.

I quite often fall asleep when reading this type of book, and I didn't once during the 'Disappearing Spoon'. Indeed it's testament to how good it is, that I read it gripped, well beyond midnight knowing that two fractious boys would wake me up in less than six hours. My chemistry days are long behind me, but Kean's book reminded me what I loved about the subject, and gave me pause to think that just maybe I was a little hasty in giving it up. Ignore the detractors, this is popular science at its best.

I completely disagree with the "Toxic prose style" review. I found the book highly enjoyable, and I thought the writing style was appropriate for the type of book, i.e. an engaging, thought provoking, sometimes witty and always fascinating account of the people and history behind the periodic table. I also found that the "gaffe" mentioned by that reviewer did not exist in my copy - it says "menthol" not "methanol". I suspect that either he has a defective copy, or that he needs to read it again properly. This excellent book is going to turn a fair number of kids (and adults) on to chemistry and science. It will not appeal to those who bought it by mistake, expecting a dry chemistry textbook.

This is up there with the best popular science books.

This is the second time I've read this book. The first time I took it out the library but it was so good that I had to buy my own. This is because I know I'll read it several times over. It's full of really interesting anecdotes and fascinating information about chemistry, history, physics, geology, etc.
If you're interested understanding the periodic table more then this is definately the book for you. I would go as far to say that every student (studying science or not) should have to read it.