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Praise

“Kean has Bill Bryson’s comic touch … a lively history of the elements and the characters behind their discovery.”
— New Scientist


“The periodic table meets the best-seller list with Sam Kean’s Disappearing Spoon, an engaging tour of the elements … with the éclat of raw sodium dropped in a beaker of water.”
— New York Times


“Nonfiction to make you sound smart over summertime gin and tonics: the human history behind the periodic table.”
— Time


“It happens often in biology, but 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. Sam Kean’s The Disappearing Spoon is a pleasure and full of insights. If only I had read it before taking chemistry.”
— Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod, Salt, and The Food of a Younger Land


“I would enthusiastically recommend the constantly surprising and witty, anecdotal approach to the Periodic Table in Sam Kean’s The Disappearing Spoon.”
— Richard Holmes


“Kean’s writing sparks like small shocks… [H]e gives science a whiz-bang verve so that every page becomes one you cannot wait to turn just to see what he’s going reveal next.”
— Boston Globe


“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


“An adventurous, far-ranging survey that offers great good fun. With this Christmas tree come plenty of gifts. Some of them even glow in the dark.”
— Barnes & Noble Review / Salon.com


“With a constant flow of fun facts bubbling to the surface, Kean writes with wit, flair, and authority in a debut that will delight.”
— Publishers Weekly


“If Sam Kean were in charge of designing the curriculum for chem class, we’d all be a little bit more interested in the often thrilling and sometimes scandalous interactions of protons and electrons.”
— Minneapolis Star-Tribune


“A science book you didn’t have to get beaten up in high school to read.”
— The Daily Beast


“Provocative stuff… The Disappearing Spoon is cleverly conceived, easily digested…”
— The Guardian


“One of the most readable and entertaining books about science yet published.”
— U.K. Express


“One of the most readable and entertaining books about science yet published.”
— U.K. Express


“[A] book intended to forever put to rest the idea that the science is boring.”
— Chemical & Engineering News


“If only The Disappearing Spoon were required textbook reading … at turns humorous and tragic, ironic and inspiring. Sam Kean manages to provide a quirky and refreshingly human look at a structure we usually think of as purely pragmatic.”
— Seed


“Unless you’re a straight-A science geek, you’ll want a teacher who enlivens even the most tedious subjects by relating material to everyday life in everyday language and who exhumes juicy backstories about experiments and the people performing them… Sam Kean is that sort of teacher.”
— Miami Herald


“[Kean] has done something remarkable: He’s made some highly technical science accessible, placed well-known and lesser-known discoveries in the context of history, and made reading about the lives of the men and women inside the lab coats enjoyable.”
— Austin American-Statesman


“He draws out chemistry’s often overlooked beauties [and] like all good science writers, Kean is fired by boundless curiosity and gee-whiz wonder, not just at the physical universe but also at humankind’s untiring attempts to figure it out.”
— Winnipeg Free Press


“If you stared a little helplessly at the chart of the periodic table on the wall of your high school chemistry class, then The Disappearing Spoon is the book for you. It elucidates both the meanings and the pleasures of those numbers and letters, and does so with style and dash.”
— Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Eaarth


“The author is a great raconteur with plenty of stories to tell … Nearly 150 years of wide-ranging science, in fact, and Kean makes it all interesting. Entertaining and enlightening.”
— Kirkus Reviews


Named a must-read for the summer of 2010.
— L.A. Times


“Crammed full of compelling anecdotes about each of the elements, plenty of nerd-gossip involving the Nobel prizes, and enough political intrigue to capture the interest of the anti-elemental among us.”
— Galleycat, on MediaBistro.com


“The Disappearing Spoon shines a welcome light on the beauty of the periodic table. Follow plain speaking and humorous Sam Kean into its intricate geography and stray into astronomy, biology, and history, learn of neon rain and gas warfare, meet both ruthless and selfless scientists, and before it is over fall head over heels for the anything-but-arcane subject of chemistry.”
— Bill Streever, author of Cold


“Kean writes in a whimsical yet easy-to-read style … Highly recommended for [those] wishing to be informed as well as entertained.”
— Library Journal


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