Lajos Kovács, Dezső Csupor, Gábor Lente, Tamás Gunda
100 Chemical Myths: Misconceptions, Misunderstandings, Explanations
Springer, 2014
This is a science book, but one which should be relatively intelligible to the intelligent layman. It deals with popular, yet largely untrue, misconceptions and misunderstandings about the chemistry in our lives: food, medicine, the environment and industrial process.
The explanations are relatively concise (few are more than three or so pages) and seek to cut through fallacies and urban legends. Because of their concision the explanations are not highly technical, although some basic knowledge of chemistry or basic science will help.
So far, so good. However I found this an intensely irritating read on a number of levels.
Each of the short explanations is self contained, although copiously cross-referenced and with a section of sources and references in the back-matter. Nevertheless the refutations are stated often with little in the way of logical reasoning or explanation; just bald statements which sounded like “we now know that …” or even “we deny it”. Because of this, and the lack of technical detail, I found the explanations often superficial and unsatisfying.
This isn’t helped by the poor illustrations. Although relatively well illustrated the graphics vary between being too small, pointless and lacking helpful captions. The authors do rather assume that one either knows what a chemical structure means, or one is happy to gloss over it, which I find intensely irritating — even as a trained chemist some memory joggers would be helpful.
I also did not find this book a comfortable read. The language is clunky. In a way this isn’t surprising as the authors, and thus the original text, are Hungarian. But the translation doesn’t flow: too often the sentence structure is obtuse; and there are too many instances of just the wrong word being used — it is clear what the meaning is but an inappropriate synonym has been used. In fact the English feels like a machine translation which hasn’t been checked by a native English speaker for flow and sense.
The book was also physically uncomfortable. It isn’t a cheap book and is from a major scientific publishing house; the paper and the binding are good. Nevertheless the production feels like a print on demand product: the board cover has a laminated glossy illustration, rather than a dust jacket, and very sharp corners which made reading in bed rather uncomfortable.
So yes, that’s right, I was not impressed. The book might have been marginally acceptable as a sub-£10 paperback, but for £45 (from Amazon) it is not of the quality — of content or production — expected.
Overall Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Category Archives: books
Oddity of the Week: Oddest Book Title
Oddest Title of the Year Award
Every year the Diagram Group offers a prize, via the column of the estimable Horace Bent in the Bookseller magazine, to the person in the trade who comes up with the oddest book title published that year. Many — but not all — of the winning titles are from professional, technical, academic and scientific publishers.
Since the prize was established in 1978, winners have included:
- Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Nude Mice (1978)
- The Madam as Entrepreneur: Career Management in House Prostitution (1979)
- Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual (1990)
- The Theory of Lengthwise Rolling (1993)
- Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (1996)
- High-Performance Stiffened Structures (2000)
- Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service (2001)
- Living with Cray Buttocks (2002)
- The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stones (2003)
Other submissions over the years have included:
- Access to the Top of Petroleum Tankers
- An Illustrated History of Dustcarts
- Bombproof Tour Horse
- Classic American Funeral Vehicles
- Cooking with Mud: The Idea of Mess in 19th-century Art and Fiction
- Did Lewis Carroll Visit Llandudno?
- Diversity of Sulfate-reducing Bacteria Along a Vertical Oxygen Gradient in a Sediment of Schiermonnikoog
- Fancy Coffins To Make Yourself
- Lightweight Sandwich Construction
- New Caribbean Office Procedures
- Pet Packaging Technology
- Principles and Practices of Bioslurping
- Psoriasis at Tour Fingertips
- Short Walks at Land’s End
- Tea Bag Folding
- The Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox
- The Anger of Aubergines
- The Fiat-Footed Flies of Europe
- The Voodoo Revenge Book: An Anger Management Program You Can Really Stick With
- Throwing Pots
- Twenty Beautiful Tears of Bottom Physics
- What is a Cow?: And Other Questions That Might Occur to Ton When Walking the Thames Path
- Whose Bottom? A Lift-the-Flap Book
- Woodcarving with a Chainsaw
From: Ian Crofton, Brewer’s Cabinet of Curiosities
Book Review: Eat Tweet
Maureen Evans
Eat Tweet: A Twitter Cookbook
Artisan; 2010
According to the blurb on the over of this book Maureen Evans was the first person to tweet recipes — not surprising as her partner is Blaine Cook the original programmer on Twitter.
Using her Twitter account @cookbook, since 2006 Evans has condensed many recipes into the 140-character Twitter format, and along the way gathered 223,000 followers! Yes, with a little ingenuity recipes can be condensed into this tiny format, as this “pocket book” of 1020 recipes proves. And it’s fun too, in a geekish sort of way.
The book is divided into the usual sections: Vegetables, Soups, Main Courses, Cakes, Bread, Drinks etc.; there are also sections on how to read the recipes, tools, conversion charts — the latter necessary as being Canadian Maureen Evans measures everything in cups (also more concise for the Twitter format) and °F. The recipes are generally designed to serve 3-4 normal adults. Apart from the introductory material there is little text other than hints and tips interspersed with the recipes, of which there are 4 to 6 to a page. And nothing in the way of illustration. But in this context somehow it doesn’t matter.
Having said that, this could be the only cook book you’ll ever need, because Evans covers nigh on everything — certainly more than enough to always eat well. And it really is everything … from the basics of stuffing and roasting your turkey, which is actually two recipes:
Stuffed Turkey: Rmv giblets(use in Turkey Stock),rinse,pat dry(+inside). Lightly stuff main/neck cavities. Skewer-shut neck; cross,tie legs.
Roast Turkey: Put StuffedTurkey on roastrack; baste every 30m@325°F 3-3½h for 5-8lb; 3½-4h for 9-12lb; 4-6h for 13-16lb until thigh>165°F.
all the way to some lovely puddings:
Rødgrød med Fløde: Boil3c h2o/c berries &freshcurrant&cherry/c sug. Sieve; +mixd ½c strch&h2o. Stir@med until thick. Top w whipdcrm.
and cake:
Chocolate Decadence Cake: Mlt2c choc/⅔c buttr; beat+⅔c coffee&flr&cocoa. Cream c sug/3egg. Fold all; fill sqpan. 40m@350°F in bainmarie.
Have I tried any of the recipes? No. Do I need to try any of the recipes to know they work? Also no. They are so simple it’s obvious they will work well. OK so perhaps Evans has picked relatively simple recipes, but she is a cooking geek and you can be sure she, and all her Twitter followers, will have tested the recipes to destruction before they hit the book!
Are there omissions? Yes of course; there are omissions in every cook book. For instance there is no mention of Jerusalem artichokes; pheasant; quail; or gammon; nor does my favourite Garlic Roast Potatoes get in. Oh OK, so here is my Garlic Roast Potatoes, in the style …
Garlic Roast Potatoes: Chop 12-16 sm taters 1″ pces. Toss w 2T chopd garlic/T chopd rosemry/2T oil/s+p. Foil parcel. ~40m@200°C
So you may not find your very favourite recipe, but you’ll find something equally as good! And you’ll have a fun time as well!
Overall Rating: ★★★★★
Book Review: Cooking for Geeks
Jeff Potter
Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks and Good Food
O’Reilly; 2010
This book was another of my Christmas presents (Thanks, Katy!) which I’ve been reading in bits and pieces over the last few weeks.
The first thing we need to get straight is that, although it contains recipes, this is essentially not a recipe book. Nor is it a book specifically about ingredients.
The author is a scientist and he takes an experimental approach to working out how things work in cooking — the effects of temperature on proteins; what various chemicals do; how bread works; how taste and smell work. And perhaps most interestingly how chefs use unexpected techniques to produce such different food to what we make at home.
Yes, I learnt a few things. Specifically I was interested in the temperatures at which different proteins denature (ie. essentially the temperature at which they cook) and how too high a temperature will denature the wrong proteins and make meat tough. But this has to be done while keeping in mind that a minimum temperature (or combination of temperature and time) is required to ensure any pathogens (bacteria; fungi; even parasites) present are killed.
And there are simple tips. For instance when cracking an egg do it on the worktop not the edge of the bowl: the former will give larger pieces of broken shell; the latter will give smaller pieces of shell that are much more likely to end up in the bowl with the egg and have to be fished out.
Oh and there is a whole chapter on hacking together hardware etc. for special cooking techniques like sous vide, filtration, using the cleaning cycle on your oven and using liquid nitrogen. Things I am never likely to do.
As I say, yes there are recipes, but they are largely there to demonstrate the effects being described: different types of dough, and oven temperature, for pizza; how whisking egg whites varies depending on the bowl you use; how different gelling agents work. Some of these things I knew, and some I have even done. I’ve not actually tried any of the recipes because although it is interesting to see these effects most of the recipes are not for things which fire me with enthusiasm or which are too much faffing around — I believe in simple, tasty and wholesome food, not a load of faffing about. (Which is why I can’t be bothered with things like cake, ice cream and soufflés.)
So in summary … This was an interesting book and it may turn out to be useful for some things — like more precise temperature control. It is a great book if you’re a geek and/or you want to do a wide range of experimental cooking — but sadly that doesn’t fire me with enthusiasm other than as an armchair scientist.
Finally though, here’s one other good tip from the book … Do check out Maureen Evans’ Twitter recipes feed, @cookbook. She has devised a method of reducing recipes to the 140 character constraint of a single tweet. As an example here’s her recipe for chocolate cake (which isn’t in the book):
Chocolate Cake: Beat¼c sug/2egg. Sift⅓c flr&cocoa/½t bkgpdr&soda/⅛t cardamom&cinn&salt. Mlt6oz choc/¼c cocontoil&coffee. Fold all. 40m@350F.
There you are: I even bring you cake!
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆
Book Review: Subterranean London
Bradley L Garrett
Subterranean London: Cracking the Capital
Prestel; 2014
This is a beautifully produced book of photographs which peels back the layers under London’s streets and brings you clandestine views of all those things we depend on but which are largely out of sight: sewers, cable tunnels, the tube, communications hubs and even Crossrail construction.
It is the work of a group of either brave or foolhardy (depending on one’s point of view) explorers intent on making this infrastructure visible, often when the authorities don’t wish it to be. They follow on in the pioneering spirit of Duncan Campbell from 30 years ago, gaining illicit access — through manholes, ventilation shafts and derelict buildings often right under the noses of “security” — to that which is normally off limits.
The book contains relatively little text — just a single page of explanation at the beginning of each of the four sections, a couple of pages of introduction and a short foreword by Will Self. This lack of text is my only major gripe; I wanted more about the places and the exploits which got the explorers to them.
But the book is about the images, each minimally captioned, which record some of the places the group have penetrated. Much of the photography is excellent and strong; well lit, well composed and professionally produced — quite remarkable considering it was all done on the hoof, at speed and with the ever-present danger of the long arm of “security”.
A long disused Mail Rail train parked in an abandoned station which is still lit
and with a working digital clock which says 0424.
From www.placehacking.co.uk
To get a better idea of what these guys do — whether you call it “place hacking” or just “urban exploration” — there is a documented visit to the now disused Post Office railway (Mail Rail) over at www.placehacking.co.uk/2011/04/24/security-breach-london-mail-rail/ from which a handful of photographs in this book are taken.
This is a book for those that like to know what’s beneath their feet, how cities hang together, what “the authorities” don’t want us to see or to indulge in some vicarious dare-devil excitement. Yes, I like a bit of all of those, but I also appreciate the photography and indeed some of the (especially Victorian) architecture — see for instance the photographs early in the book of Finsbury Park Reservoir. This is stuff which is hidden from sight, but deserves to be seen and appreciated for both its beauty and its engineering.
Having said that, when you look at the haphazard state of some of the cabling, and the dilapidated state of many of the tunnels themselves, one really does start to wonder how anything functions at all!
So yes, this is a book for the geek and the vicarious explorer. A book to dip into to appreciate the photography, the beauty and the engineering. As such it is almost endlessly fascinating and it is only the lack of text which prevents it from getting a full five stars.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆
Book Review: There is No God …
Brad Warner
There is No God and He is Always with You: A Search for God in Odd Places
New World Library, 2013
Brad Warner is an American Sōtō** Zen master, and monk, who lives in the world. He has been practising and studying Zen since 1983 in America and Japan. This is his fifth book looking at various aspects of Zen, what it is and how it works for him in the world rather than in an enclosed monastery.
Zen does not require belief in a god, or gods, or an afterlife, or any of the trappings of the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), Hinduism or many of the other Buddhist traditions. Warner’s assertion is that Buddhism, as a philosophy and way of life rather than a religion requiring faith, has no need of god(s); those “mainstream Buddhism” has have been bolted on over the centuries. In this sense the Zen schools are truer to the original way taught by Gautama Buddha.
And yet Warner says there is a god. Not the Santa Claus figure sitting on a white cloud of the Abrahamic religions; nor the pantheon of Hinduism. God is much more nebulous, not really there at all, certainly not an identifiable figure, and yet is everything and always. To me this seems an essentially pantheistic view, but one emanating from much deeper: from Warner’s enlightenment.
This book looks at a variety of aspects of this god; at what some of the Zen teachings say; and where Warner says they have hitherto been poorly interpreted. The book also looks at the ways and times Warner has encountered this god in the world. He also touches on the philosophical concepts of the meaning of life and the afterlife. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of Brad Warner in the book as he develops nearly all the 22 short chapters from a real worldly experience.
Warner has a light, readable style, which means you can read this book quickly and at a superficial level, as I admit I have mostly done. While the book is an easy read I didn’t find it as captivating as his previous books. That’s not to say it doesn’t make one stop and think from time to time, and I feel sure it would repay another, deeper, reading as Warner packs a lot into just under 200 pages.
If you’re interested in Buddhism, Zen or comparative religion this is worth a read. Who knows, it may even lead you to enlightenment.
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆
** Forget about the tricks of Zen koans; these are the teaching methods of the Rinzai school of Zen. Sōtō Zen (founded by Dōgen in the 13th century) is more about using pure meditation to discover things for oneself.
Ten Things #10
A month or so ago my friend Gabriella tagged me in the 10 Books Challenge: to list 10 books that stayed with you in some way. I had been thinking about this for a while, so I was enjoined not to think too hard about it, especially as they don’t have to be the “right” books or great works of literature, just ones that have affected you in some way and stayed with you.
Looking back I find I have done something very similar before. But this time my rather eclectic list is somewhat different …
10 Books that Mean Something to Me
- Like Gabriella I have to start with Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. All twelve volumes. I’ve written so many times before about Dance I’ll say no more here.
- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass. I remember these from an early age and they started me thinking about language and logic. I especially love the Martin Gardner’s Annotated Alice, first encountered as a student.
- TS Elliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. As an 8-year-old I knew “Skimbleshanks” by heart.
- Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief and Waugh in Abyssinia which might as well be the same book.
- Noreen Marshall, Dictionary of Children’s Clothes, 1700s to Present. How can I not have been influenced by this: I lived with (and still do live with) the author through the umpteen years it was being written.
- Gabriel Chevallier, Clochemerle. Brilliant farce. Read as a teenager.
- John Betjeman, High and Low. I bought this in my teens, when it first came out and for many years it was my go-to book if I had a sleepless night.
- Florence Greenberg, Jewish Cooking. No I’m not Jewish, but I found this when a student and it is such an excellent cookery book. OK there’s no pork or offal but there is just about everything else from the everyday to the special.
- Douglas Adams, Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
- Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast trilogy, especially the first book Titus Groan. I couldn’t finish volume three, Titus Alone; it was just too depressing.
As this is my “Ten Things” I’m not tagging anyone in particular, but you’re all challenged to do this if you haven’t already.
Book Review: The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being
Alice Roberts
The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us
Heron Books, 2014
Alice Roberts is Professor of Public Engagement with Science at the University of Birmingham, and is perhaps the outstanding scientific polymath of our age: medic, anatomist, anthropologist, archaeologist, television science presenter and no mean artist. The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being is her latest book and sets out to unfold for us the amazing way in which we develop as an embryo and foetus and some of the ways in which we have probably evolved to this. And what an amazing voyage we are taken on!
I found the book immensely interesting and very readable. Roberts’ style is light, airy and chattily personal, while being scientifically accurate and informative — at times amusing and even ribald: how many authors could get away with a section entitled “Mind the Bollocks”? In fact I found the book so readable I had to ration myself to one or two chapters a night otherwise I would have devoured it in a single all night read.
We are taken on a journey from conception to birth with a look at how all the major systems of the body develop throughout pregnancy from the single egg and the successful sperm to the birth of a baby. Along the way Roberts describes the embryology, including insights from her own two pregnancies and the medical tests she has had done on her in the interests of science.
But more than this, she also discusses the archaeological evidence for how and why evolution has given us the kit of parts we have; how evolution got to produce them; and why they are different from other species. Right at the beginning of the book Roberts discusses the various theories of embryos and how babies are built from Aristotle to the present day. She is at pains to point out that each of these theories was consistent with the state of knowledge at the time so we shouldn’t scoff at them for being ignorant — one day our theories will be considered equally backward in the light of new knowledge.
Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have reservations about it. It is a book for the scientifically (specifically, medically) literate layman. Roberts, rightly in my view, calls things by their correct scientific and medical names but I felt too often missed the opportunity to explain those names; what the part is or does. Of course the downside of providing more explanation is that it could disrupt the flow of the text (and make for a larger, more expensive book).
However I think there is a solution, at least in part, to this problem. The book is illustrated by Roberts’ own delightful line drawings — a very real demonstration of her skill as an anatomist! But there are for my money far too few illustrations. There were many occasions where I felt that a drawing (or other illustration) could have made the text much more powerful: especially in cases where the anatomy of different species, or at different stages of development, is being compared. Yes, some of those drawings are there, but for me too few. And drawings could have been used to explain some of the otherwise unexplained. In this respect I wanted more.
My other gripe is one which I all too frequently have to level at modern publishing (rather than authors): the poor quality of the paper used. Yes everyone wants to keep cost down and at £19.99 for almost 400 pages in hardback this is at the cheaper end of the spectrum. But oh that poor quality paper, which will not stand the test of time.
These are, however, relatively minor complaints about a book which I found informative, hugely interesting and immensely readable. I definitely came out somewhere different to where I went in!
So if you are interested in how babies grow in the womb, and how we got to be the shape we are, then I would thoroughly recommend this book.
It really is just so unlikely that we are all here, and as “normal” as we are!
Overall Rating: ★★★★★
Book Review: The Disappearing Spoon
Sam Kean
The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales from the Periodic Table
Black Swan, 2011
This is a science book for the interested layman. Its premise is to tell interesting stories about the elements, their discoveries and their properties.
Each of the 19 chapters follows the fortunes (or otherwise) of several, not obviously related, elements — who discovered them and how; why they are interesting and idiosyncratic. Kean is certainly able to tell the stories well and keep the reader engaged; as the cover quote from New Scientist says:
Kean has Bill Bryson’s comic touch … a lively history of the elements and the characters behind their discovery.
I found the book easy, but engaging, reading and quite hard to put down to the extent that I had to ration myself to a couple of chapters a night rather than stay up reading all night.
It is an interesting read although for a trained chemist it doesn’t really go deep enough. There are almost no pictures, diagrams or chemical formulae. That’s fine as it does make it accessible to the intelligent layman and means the book can be printed cheaply in monochrome on poor quality paper. But as a trained scientist I found I wanted more explanatory images and formulae. To that extent I was disappointed.
Overall a book I enjoyed and which should appeal to those with a scientific interest, although I would have liked something deeper.
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆
Book Review: The Secret World of Sleep
Penelope A Lewis
The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
This is another of those books which I wanted to read and which appeared for either Christmas or my birthday (I forget now which as they are quite close together). This is what the cover blurb says:
A highly regarded neuroscientist explains the little-known role of sleep in processing our waking life and making sense of difficult emotions and experiences.
In recent years neuroscientists have uncovered the countless ways our brain trips us up in day-to-day life, from its propensity toward irrational thought to how our intuitions deceive us. The latest research on sleep, however, points in the opposite direction. Where old wives’ tales have long advised to “sleep on a problem,” today scientists are discovering the truth behind these folk sayings and how the busy brain radically improves our minds through sleep and dreams. In The Secret World of Sleep, neuroscientist Penny Lewis explores the latest research into the nighttime brain to understand the real benefits of sleep. She shows how, while our body rests, our brain practices tasks it learned during the day, replays traumatic events to mollify them, and forges connections between distant concepts. By understanding the roles that the nocturnal brain plays in our waking life, we can improve the relationship between the two and even boost creativity and memory. This is a fascinating exploration of one of the most surprising corners of neuroscience that shows how science may be able to harness the power of sleep to improve learning, health, and more.
Yes, OK, I guess it does do all of that and at a level which is likely OK for the intelligent layman. But as a scientist I found it somewhat lacking, or maybe more correctly it felt loose, in the details. I don’t profess to be very knowledgeable about the neurology of sleep, but I had the feeling that there was more there which is known and which would tie everything together. I may be wrong, and in fairness to Lewis she does say at a number of points “we don’t know how this works”.
Did it tell me anything I didn’t know? Well nothing which I found helpful and which has stuck sufficiently that I could recite it now. As always, yes, OK, I’m probably way above the audience this was written for. I found it an easy but not compelling, or gripping, read — sufficiently so that I whizzed through it far faster than I had expected.
All of this is a shame because I wanted to get that “Wow!” inspirational insight and it didn’t happen. I still feel it should.
As with many modern books it is a slim volume (about 190 pages) and it could have been much slimmer: as always there is too much white space on the page. Even if you don’t want to reduce the font size the leading could certainly be reduced, as could the margins slightly. That would make it a more compact volume, both in looks and physically.
I was also not struck on the cartoon-style illustrations. I didn’t find them illuminating (indeed at times downright confusing) and felt that maybe a few more, better, diagrams were needed for the target audience.
One thing which Lewis does however do well is to write a summary paragraph or two at the end of each chapter. Other authors please copy.
Is this a bad book? No, certainly not. It would likely work very well for an intelligent layman. It is merely that it didn’t work for me; but then it probably wasn’t intended to.
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆