Traveling today. Time killer needed. Tablets encourage reading! A book would be nice.
I just downloaded “Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc,” by Hugh Aldersey-Williams. Is it possible to find a nerdier title?
Like the alphabet, the calendar, or the zodiac, the periodic table of the chemical elements has a permanent place in our imagination. But aside from the handful of common ones (iron, carbon, copper, gold), the elements themselves remain wrapped in mystery. We do not know what most of them look like, how they exist in nature, how they got their names, or of what use they are to us.
The reviews were encouraging. I’ll let you know. Fifty Shades will continue to wait.
Great book! My friend and I loved it. But for full disclosure, we’re science teachers. 🙂 Hope you like it.
And yes, there is a nerdier title-Salt: A World History and by the same author (Kurlansky), Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. But both interesting once you get into them.
Nerd? I prefer the term INTELLECTUAL BADASS 😉
Liza – I like your style. May I borrow the term?
My daughter would love it. She read the history of salt. Can you say Christmas present? Enjoy your travels…
Of course I did read a book called The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance years ago. Guess I’m one of the ‘Intellectual badasses’ 🙂
If you like this you might also like “the disappearing spoon” by Sam Kean.
How about: “How the States Got Their Shapes”
Stop down on the first floor and I will let you borrow my copy of ‘Here’s looking at Euclid, a surprising excursion through the atonishing world of Math’. You are not the only nerd in the building