Review - Letters to a Young Chemist editor Abhik Ghosh (3/5 stars)

Reading level: Young Adult/Adult
Genre: Chemistry/Non-fiction
Size: 320 pages
Publisher: Wiley-Interscience
Release Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0470390436
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Amazon Vine
Rating: 3/5 stars

I got a copy of this book to review through the Amazon Vine program. I work as a chemist and thought this sounded like a fun read. While it was a somewhat interesting read for someone who works in the field I don't think it was a good read for someone who is considering chemistry as a career.

The book is broken into four sections: From Fundamentals to Applications, Chemistry and the Life Sciences, Functional Materials, and Chemistry and Energy. Each case study starts as a letter to a fictional undergrad student named Amanda who is considering getting a degree in chemistry. The author of each case study gives a brief history of their background and then delves into a specific example of how they have used chemistry to solve a problem/problems.

The concept it fun but its execution is lacking in many cases. Like any collection of "stories" there are a lot of hits and a lot of misses in this book. My main problem with this book that a lot of the misses are in the beginning of the book in the From Fundamentals to Applications section. If I had started reading this book as a student I would have run the other way from chemistry; these initial case studies are difficult to understand, highly technical, and don't apply to problems that are easy to relate to. I've worked in the field for over 10 years and even my eyes were glazing over halfway through the first case study.

So just keep in mind this reads like a technical journal, you need a lot of chemical knowledge to follow these case studies. Some of the case studies are so specific and narrow that you need a lot of very specific knowledge to understand what is going on.

That being said there are some parts of the book that are very well done and would be exciting to read it you were considering a career in chemistry. Most of the cases in the section on Chemitry and the Life Sciences were pretty interesting. I enjoyed the case study called "Better than Sliced Bread" which goes into how they are working on solving Celiac's and other such diseases. I also enjoyed the Choreographing DNA section which discussed DNA and related it to a dance recital that the author participated in. Other highlights were "Biomaterials at the Beach: How Marine Biology Uses Chemistry to Make Materials" and "Happy Campers: Chemists' Solutions to Energy problems". These selections tackled issues that are broadly understood and did a good job of explaining in a way that was easy to understand without already have a PhD in Chemistry.

Overall I do think that this book provides an interesting array of case studies from various fields in chemistry; it is an interesting read for someone who is working in the field of chemistry. Unfortunately I do not think it does a good job targeting the audience it was intended for...that of young undergrads thinking about a career in chemistry. Many of the case studies tackle obscure issues, are highly technical in explanation, and just plain tedious to read about. I wouldn't recommend this for students considering a degree in chemistry; I do cautiously recommend this for chemists interested in reading overviews of a broad variety of new chemistry areas.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
- 150+ Books Reading Challenge

Review - The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe by Theodore Gray and Nick Mann (5/5 stars)

I am a chemist and have always been fascinated by the Periodic Table of Elements.  So, imagine my excitement when I saw this book sitting in the bookstore.  Not only does it provide information on all 118 elements in the Periodic Table, it does it in a way that is interesting, accessible, and beautiful.  This is a book that makes you want to touch it and turn the pages, you just can't resist.  The picture of the elements are colorful and intriguing; they are all featured on a stylish black background...this is just a beautiful book.

Each element features a picture of the element in its purest form.  The side of the page has a small strip that gives lots of technical data.  The elements position on the periodic table is showm, atomic weight, density, atomic radius, crystal structure, electron order filing, atomic emissions spectrum, and state of matter are all given in this strip.  The rest of the page is given over to a few paragraphs about the element.  Then there are excellent pictures showing instances where the element is used and these pictures also have small descriptions.   Most elements are given a two page spread, but some of the lucky elements get 4 pages!

In addition to the individual elements the beginning of the book discusses the different sections of the periodic table and how the periodic table of elements got its shape.

This is more of a coffee table book than an ultimate reference to the Periodic Table of Elements.  Although it does provide a lot of information on the Elements.  Much of the discussion on each Element is anecdotal and somewhat humorous.  This makes the book an excellent reference for the layman interested in Elements, it also makes the book an entertaining read.  You would have to go elsewhere to get into the gritty details of some of these elements though....for example if you were trying to synthesize something with them or something else deeply technical.

Overall I really loved this book.  It is such an awesome book with such neat pictures. Everyone in the house from my computer loving husband to my three year old son has spent time looking through this book.  It is just such an interesting book and it is presented in such a beautiful way.  Not to mention it is even fun to read!  I think everyone should have this book in their house; if nothing else it makes for interesting discussions as you see the bizarre forms of some of the elements.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (4/5 stars)

I got this book through the Amazon vine program. People who have described this as Artemis Fowl as a chemist who solves mysteries are right on the mark. So far it looks like the author has at least two more books coming out in this series; one in 2010 and one in 2011. This was an enjoyable book overall.

Flavia is character that will put many people in mind of Artemis Fowl or Theodosia. She is a child genius that believes she knows it all; with this book though there are some marked differences from the aforementioned series. Flavia loves chemistry; and as I myself am a chemist this aspect of the book delighted me, it was great to read about the chemistry and how it was involved in the murder in the book. If anyone is really interested in the chemistry of poison: The Molecules of Murder is a very entertaining non-fiction read. Anyway, back to the book...some other differences are that the adults in this book are actually very intelligent and quite crafty in their own right; a change from the mentioned series where adults commonly act like buffoons. Also Flavia is a fairly believable character; she makes mistakes that a girl her age would make; even though she is a genius, she is not a genius at everything.

For the most part the book was well-written and fast-paced. The only problem I had with the book is that there were a ton of points were Flavia made poor assumptions and then she would figure it out and then the plot would twist in a different direction. This would have been okay if it had only happened once, but the plot twists (and Flavia's mistakes) were so numerous that it made the storyline a bit disjointed and at times a bit confusing to follow. I think this twisting also interrupted the flow of the story; which in general was good but towards the end of the book got kind of forced and contrived.

Overall it was an interesting read. I loved the that chemistry was involved in it. It would have been nice to have an afterword from the author stating how accurate all of the chemistry was and where he did his chemical research; but that is just the scientist in me speaking. I do not know if I will read any more books in this series though; Flavia did kind of get on my nerves with how often she was mistaken about things despite being a genius.

The Genie in the Bottle by Dr. Joe Schwarcz (4/5 stars)

This is a fun little book that is exactly what the sub-heading on the book says it is: 67 commentaries on the fascinating chemistry of everyday life. I work as a chemist and I did enjoy reading this book.

The book is broken up into 5 main sections. There is a section on Health Matters, Food Matters, Chemistry Everywhere, learning from the past, and Silly stories. The Health Matters and Food Matters are the most organized sections of the book. The mini-stories in the these two sections deal exclusively with health or food. Each section had a collection of short anecdotes. The anecdotes average at 3-4 pages per length with some being shorter and a few being significantly longer.

This book is definitely geared more toward the average joe than to a chemist. That being said, there is enough chemistry addressed to interest your everyday chemist too. I was a bit disappointed that I had heard a lot of these stories before; they are things I've read about in headlines or just have general knowledge of. But for everything I had heard of there were two things I hadn't heard about.

There is a lot of fun miscellaneous information in this book. Depending on how much of that you want to retain this book could be a quick or a slow read. I personally had trouble reading large portions of it at once because it was just so much information to assimilate. Especially in the later sections the anecdotes tend to jump around willy, nilly. You may be reading about how Hydrogen was discovered then, in the next anecdote, you are reading about Silly Putty. I found that I enjoyed the book (and remembered all the fun facts) the best when I read a few anecdotes a day.

The writing style is done very well. There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor and there are a lot of cleverly worded passages. This is a chemistry book that will amuse and interest everyone. I personally applaud it for bringing chemistry to the masses. Chemistry is awesome and interesting; and it is wonderful that Schwarcz can make it interesting for everyone. I plan on checking out his additional collections of chemistry anecdotes in the future.

Molecules of Murder by John Emsley (5/5 stars)

So I am chemist by trade and when I saw this book pop up on Amazon Vine I thought I would get it and give it a read. It is a fascinating book. Anyone interested in chemistry, forensics, or even poisons would find this book fascinating; you don't need a technical background.

This book covers 5 poisons found in nature and 5 man-made poisons. Each chapter is very nicely structured and goes through how the poison was discovered, how the poison affects the human body, what remedies there are, and then goes through a case study where the poison was used to murder someone. In some chapters there are sections that give statistics on the number of poisonings with a given poison and how many of these are accidental.

The only parts that might require some technical knowledge are the chemical descriptions of the poisons and how the poison reacts with the enzymes (or whatever) in the human body. Even these parts of the book are presented in such a fashion that someone without a depth of technical knowledge gets a lot out of them.

The book is very well-written. I was worried this would be more of a dry technical read but it wasn't. I was sucked in right from the beginning and had trouble putting the book down. I really, really enjoyed it.

This is not something you would want to use as a handbook for poisoning because for the majority of cases the poisons go wrong and/or the poisoners get caught. My husband did want to know exactly why I need to read a book about poisons. I told him it was in self-defense :-)

Overall a great book. I will definitely keep an eye out for more books from this author. A colleague of mine actually heard John Emsley do a talk on forensic chemistry at an American Chemical Society meeting; supposedly he is also a great speaker.