The Disappearing Spoon
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Review
...brimming with puckish wit ... his love for the elements is downright infectious ... He gives science a whiz-bang verve so that every page becomes one you cannot wait to turn just to see what he's going to reveal next. --Caroline Leavitt, Boston Globe
Kean has Bill Bryson's comic touch... a lively history of the elements and the characters behind their discovery. --New Scientist
A non-stop parade of lively science stories... with the éclat of raw sodium dropped in a beaker of water. --New York Times
Unpacks the periodic table's bag of tricks ... with such aplomb and fascination that material normally as heavy as lead transmutes into gold ... the anecdotal flourishes of Oliver Sacks and the populist accessibility of Malcolm Gladwell --Entertainment Weekly
Only once in a rare while does an author come along with the craft and the vision to capture the fun and fascination of chemistry. The Disappearing Spoon is a pleasure and full of insights. If only I had read it before taking chemistry --Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod and Salt
One of the most readable and entertaining books about science yet published ... [Kean] is master of enlightening metaphors
--Daily Express
This book is entirely entertaining - it's a real page turner, and there's very little not to like about the combination of a string of QI like fascinating facts with a whole slew of engaging stories ... a delight to read, taking a very predictable subject and approaching it in an entertaining, original and informative way ... if you want to be entertained and find out lots of history and fascinating facts around the elements themselves, this is the one for you. --Popularscience.co.uk
This book is the literary equivalent of a prime-time documentary on the Discovery Channel or BBC1: populist, accesible, and elementary (boom-boom!), without being simplistic ... You don't need to know your p from your d orbitals to understand, enjoy and learn from a book carefully written by an author keen to share his enthusiasm with a wider audience ... even for those of us with science backgrounds, The Disappearing Spoon remains diverting and entertaining ... The cast of characters makes it entertaining and accesible ... Given the lamentable state of education about science among the general public, we should applaud Kean's ability to bring chemistry to the masses.
--Mark Greener, Fortean Times
Kean has Bill Bryson's comic touch... a lively history of the elements and the characters behind their discovery. --New Scientist
A non-stop parade of lively science stories... with the éclat of raw sodium dropped in a beaker of water. --New York Times
Unpacks the periodic table's bag of tricks ... with such aplomb and fascination that material normally as heavy as lead transmutes into gold ... the anecdotal flourishes of Oliver Sacks and the populist accessibility of Malcolm Gladwell --Entertainment Weekly
Only once in a rare while does an author come along with the craft and the vision to capture the fun and fascination of chemistry. The Disappearing Spoon is a pleasure and full of insights. If only I had read it before taking chemistry --Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod and Salt
One of the most readable and entertaining books about science yet published ... [Kean] is master of enlightening metaphors
--Daily Express
This book is entirely entertaining - it's a real page turner, and there's very little not to like about the combination of a string of QI like fascinating facts with a whole slew of engaging stories ... a delight to read, taking a very predictable subject and approaching it in an entertaining, original and informative way ... if you want to be entertained and find out lots of history and fascinating facts around the elements themselves, this is the one for you. --Popularscience.co.uk
This book is the literary equivalent of a prime-time documentary on the Discovery Channel or BBC1: populist, accesible, and elementary (boom-boom!), without being simplistic ... You don't need to know your p from your d orbitals to understand, enjoy and learn from a book carefully written by an author keen to share his enthusiasm with a wider audience ... even for those of us with science backgrounds, The Disappearing Spoon remains diverting and entertaining ... The cast of characters makes it entertaining and accesible ... Given the lamentable state of education about science among the general public, we should applaud Kean's ability to bring chemistry to the masses.
--Mark Greener, Fortean Times
Book Description
The New York Times bestselling debut of popular science's answer to Malcolm Gladwell
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format: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.
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.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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 up there with the best popular science books.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Really fantastic book and I've recommended it to many others. All the stories are so interesting!! Loved it! I can very highly recommend.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent read
Started on the book the day I resceived it. Found it most interesting and entertaining. A background in chemistry (teaching the subject for 20 years) may have been a help, but the... Read more
Published 21 days ago by Søren
Surprisingly entertaining
I received this book as an eighteenth birthday present from my (rather eccentric) godfather and was rather dubious before beginning it. Read more
Published 2 months ago by CatrionaMayJ
Engaging and highly readable
I was given this book as a Christmas present, and while I am generally sceptical about the quality of a lot of popular science writing, this book gave me cause to rethink my... Read more
Published 4 months ago by M Shepheard
Periodic brilliance littered with irritations
I was given this book for Christmas 2011 and was really looking forward to reading it. Notice the four star review - that means I enjoyed it as an introduction to the Periodic... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Richard H
Fascinating and personal
Mendeleyev's Dream
Reading the Disappearing Spoon, I found out so much about scientists, the elements and the way discoveries are sometimes made. Read more
Reading the Disappearing Spoon, I found out so much about scientists, the elements and the way discoveries are sometimes made. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Helonbike
Gets at least one thing totally wrong, which makes me doubt the rest
I actually enjoyed this book, mostly. However, when he writes about Goethe's 'Elective Affinities' he has got entirely the wrong end of the stick. Read more
Published 5 months ago by G. Taylor
It's now one of my favourite non-fiction 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. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Ad Wright
More about the history of chemistry than the periodic table
This is a bit of a strange book. The title and descriptions might well pull in a lot of people who would like to know more about this 'periodic table' thing, but I believe that... Read more
Published 6 months ago by E. Sharman
Not a great synopsis
I bought this book after reading the synopsis which suggested that the book was full of "fascinating tales" of the elements and how their discovery shaped our world history. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Sally Smith
Awesome.
Accessible, always interesting, insightful, easy read with nice touches of politics and philosophy. Buy it. Buy it now. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Hoqueroach
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