Two scientists entertainingly explore the intersections between chemistry and history, such as the French army uniform buttons made of tin, which crumbles to dust in low temperatures, that some scholars blame for the failure of Napoleon’s Russian campaign.
In their very brief introduction, Le Couteur (Chemsitry/Capilano College, British Columbia) and industrial chemist Burreson outline the basics of molecular structures, emphasizing how much difference even an apparently tiny alteration can make. The bulk of the text consists of 17 chapters devoted to individual molecules or related groups of molecules, natural as well as synthetic, covering almost every area of human activity. Peppers, nutmeg, and cloves set off a wave of explorations and conquests beginning in the late Middle Ages and ending with European colonies around the globe. The discovery of ascorbic acid, better known as vitamin C, made possible the long voyages that solidified the colonial powers’ grip on their empires. Nitro compounds, in particular gunpowder and other explosives, are key ingredients in the change from the stylized combat of medieval warfare to the bombs and rockets of today. Other chemicals made their impact closer to home: mauve, the synthetic dye that named a decade; and nylon, which changed the face of women's fashions. The addictive chemicals nicotine, morphine, and caffeine have played sinister roles in the oppression of native peoples in several parts of the world, but so have cellulose and sucrose, the central molecules of cotton and sugar. Many chemical substances have had ambiguous histories; the insecticide DDT, now outlawed in much of the world, contributed greatly to the virtual disappearance of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria from developed countries. The authors unearth a wealth of anecdotes from all parts of the world and use them effectively to illustrate the technological underpinnings of modern society.
Thoughtful, often surprising, smoothly written.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-58542-220-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
Categories: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.
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One of history’s most prolific inventors receives his due from one of the world’s greatest biographers.
Pulitzer and National Book Award winner Morris (This Living Hand and Other Essays, 2012, etc.), who died this year, agrees that Thomas Edison (1847-1931) almost certainly said, “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” and few readers of this outstanding biography will doubt that he was the quintessential workaholic. Raised in a middle-class Michigan family, Edison displayed an obsessive entrepreneurial spirit from childhood. As an adolescent, he ran a thriving business selling food and newspapers on a local railroad. Learning Morse code, he spent the Civil War as a telegrapher, impressing colleagues with his speed and superiors with his ability to improve the equipment. In 1870, he opened his own shop to produce inventions to order. By 1876, he had money to build a large laboratory in New Jersey, possibly the world’s first industrial research facility. Never a loner, Edison hired talented people to assist him. The dazzling results included the first commercially successful light bulb for which, Morris reminds readers, he invented the entire system: dynamo, wires, transformers, connections, and switches. Critics proclaim that Edison’s innovations (motion pictures, fluoroscope, rechargeable batteries, mimeograph, etc.) were merely improvements on others’ work, but this is mostly a matter of sour grapes. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone was a clunky, short-range device until it added Edison’s carbon microphone. And his phonograph flabbergasted everyone. Humans had been making images long before Daguerre, but no one had ever reproduced sound. Morris rivetingly describes the personalities, business details, and practical uses of Edison’s inventions as well as the massive technical details of years of research and trial and error for both his triumphs and his failures. For no obvious reason, the author writes in reverse chronological order, beginning in 1920, with each of the seven following chapters backtracking a decade. It may not satisfy all readers, but it works.
Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9311-0
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BUSINESS | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | BUSINESS | ENTREPRENUERSHP
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Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.
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Award-winning scientist Jahren (Geology and Geophysics/Univ. of Hawaii) delivers a personal memoir and a paean to the natural world.
The author’s father was a physics and earth science teacher who encouraged her play in the laboratory, and her mother was a student of English literature who nurtured her love of reading. Both of these early influences engrossingly combine in this adroit story of a dedication to science. Jahren’s journey from struggling student to struggling scientist has the narrative tension of a novel and characters she imbues with real depth. The heroes in this tale are the plants that the author studies, and throughout, she employs her facility with words to engage her readers. We learn much along the way—e.g., how the willow tree clones itself, the courage of a seed’s first root, the symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, and the airborne signals used by trees in their ongoing war against insects. Trees are of key interest to Jahren, and at times she waxes poetic: “Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.” The author draws many parallels between her subjects and herself. This is her story, after all, and we are engaged beyond expectation as she relates her struggle in building and running laboratory after laboratory at the universities that have employed her. Present throughout is her lab partner, a disaffected genius named Bill, whom she recruited when she was a graduate student at Berkeley and with whom she’s worked ever since. The author’s tenacity, hope, and gratitude are all evident as she and Bill chase the sweetness of discovery in the face of the harsh economic realities of the research scientist.
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87493-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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