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A review by chemistry_goodness
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks
5.0
One of my favorite science biographies. Sacks weaves a tremendous amount of chemical history into his bio and takes some effort if you don't have a science background but I believe it's worth the effort. He grew up in a different time. Chemistry kits now are somewhat boring because many of the really interesting chemicals have been removed over the years due to well-founded worries about toxicities. Sacks grew up when you could still go and buy chemicals that had dual use as something useful and as a poison. OK, the poisons were/are useful but that's not the point!
I used to assign it over 10 years ago to my General Chemistry I students as required reading and while they appreciated the information, they found it a difficult read over 4-6 weeks of time. The footnotes sometimes span more than one page you can't simply ship through this book without taking time to look up some information. I don't mean to suggest that that detracts from the book but it does make it a potentially challenging read for many people.
It's worth it.
As an aside, it was students' reactions to this book that resulted in a still-running joke in our department. Part of the assignment was for students to write a few paragraphs about the book and a couple of students in each class would complain about the "plot" and that they didn't like my choice of "novels". Hmm.
I used to assign it over 10 years ago to my General Chemistry I students as required reading and while they appreciated the information, they found it a difficult read over 4-6 weeks of time. The footnotes sometimes span more than one page you can't simply ship through this book without taking time to look up some information. I don't mean to suggest that that detracts from the book but it does make it a potentially challenging read for many people.
It's worth it.
As an aside, it was students' reactions to this book that resulted in a still-running joke in our department. Part of the assignment was for students to write a few paragraphs about the book and a couple of students in each class would complain about the "plot" and that they didn't like my choice of "novels". Hmm.