Neil Armstrong, 1930-2012

I know I've said this before, but I was obsessed with space travel as a kid.  Some of my earliest heroes where the men and women who got to do the one thing I wanted most in the world, go into space and look down at the Earth.  The main reason for that childhood obsession, Neil Armstrong and his heroic walk on the moon.  I can't even imagine the courage it would take to walk out of that spacecraft and take the first step a human ever made on the moon.  Every opportunity I had, I would read about Neil Armstrong and his role in the mission.

As I aged, my desire to go to space faded, but my admiration of the first man to walk on the moon never faded.  Every time I see a news story that covers a new development in space exploration, I think of those earlier men and women who made it all possible.  With his passing, I lost a hero and the world lost a courageous man who dared to be the first.

Sally Ride, 1951-2012

When I was in the 4th and 5th grades I was obsessed with space and space exploration.  My heroes where the men and women who put their lives at risk and did what I could only dream of doing.  Astronauts like Buzz Aldrin, John Glenn, and Sally Ride where who I wanted to be like when I grew up.

I wanted more than anything to go to space camp those years, but we never had the money for it.  Instead I put puzzles together of the milky way, read every book I could get my hands on, and dreamt that one day I would get to follow in those footsteps.  That day never happened, but that never slowed my interest or passion for the subject.

Millions of other kids have shared that dream, a lot of them in my generation, because of Sally Ride.  She gave all of us, especially young girls, the inspiration to dream big.  She is one of my personal heroes and for that inspiration, she will always have my gratitude.

She will be rememberd for what she did, but her legacy will live on in the millions of young people who got into the sciences because of the example she gave us to follow.

The Technologists by Matthew Pearl

Synopsis From Tour Site:

Boston, 1868. The Civil War may be over but a new war has begun, one between the past and the present, tradition and technology. On a former marshy wasteland, the daring Massachusetts Institute of Technology is rising, its mission to harness science for the benefit of all and to open the doors of opportunity to everyone of merit. But in Boston Harbor a fiery cataclysm throws commerce into chaos, as ships’ instruments spin inexplicably out of control. Soon after, another mysterious catastrophe devastates the heart of the city. Is it sabotage by scientific means or Nature revolting against man’s attempt to control it?

The shocking disasters cast a pall over M.I.T. and provoke assaults from all sides—rival Harvard, labor unions, and a sensationalistic press. With their first graduation and the very survival of their groundbreaking college now in doubt, a band of the Institute’s best and brightest students secretly come together to save innocent lives and track down the truth, armed with ingenuity and their unique scientific training. 

Led by “charity scholar” Marcus Mansfield, a quiet Civil War veteran and one-time machinist struggling to find his footing in rarefied Boston society, the group is rounded out by irrepressible Robert Richards, the bluest of Beacon Hill bluebloods; Edwin Hoyt, class genius; and brilliant freshman Ellen Swallow, the Institute’s lone, ostracized female student. Working against their small secret society, from within and without, are the arrayed forces of a stratified culture determined to resist change at all costs and a dark mastermind bent on the utter destruction of the city. 

I've been dreading this review more than you can ever possibly know.  There is just something about being last that I find horrifying and just a little intimidating.  What if I'm the only one who didn't care all that much for the book?  Do I really want to be responsible for ending a blog tour on a slightly sour note?  Now I can't say I read every review before mine, but of the ones I have read, I do think I'm going to be in a very small minority on this one.  The worst part, the reasoning behind my dread, is that I really can't give a logical, well thought out reason for what I'm about to say,

I actually think I've used this analogy before, or at least something akin to it, but here it goes anyway.  Let's say you are really in the mood for tomato bisque with cheese tortellini and spinach.  It's all you have been thinking about all day at work.  You can already taste the sweetness of the tomato, feel the warmth of the soup as it gives you the comfort you have been so desperately needing.  But when you get home, all you can get is clam chowder.  Now you still like chowder, but it's not what you were craving all this time.  It just doesn't give you that happy feeling you know the tomato bisque would have given you.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I think The Technologists was good, it just didn't do anything for me.

Now I thought being a total wimp and leaving it here, but then I realized that is a pretty cowardly thing to do.   If I'm going to even tell one person that I didn't particularly care for this book, I should at least try to give some sort of reason why.  I think my biggest issue is that I'm just not that into science fiction.  Now I know this isn't science fiction in the way we have come to view the genre.  It's not a story about interstellar space travel with tentacled aliens bent on the destruction of Earth.  Honestly, I wouldn't have even tried to read such a book.  I'm using the term in the same manner I would use it to describe a book like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.  And honestly, I think I had about the same reaction to both books.

Where they both shined for me was the actions scenes.  The Technologists features science taken to a destructive and cruel usage in order to fulfil a unfathomable amount of greed and a twisted sense of revenge.  These were the parts of the books that had me hooked and drawn in the entire time.  I wanted to witness the scenes on the docks, the destruction in the financial districts, and the final action scene left me in awe of the magnitude of it all.  But that's where the good times ended for me, a lot like my reaction of the Verne book.

What I didn't care all that much for where the characters.  I guess Marcus and his friends are interesting and intelligent, but they really never became fully three dimensional for me.  I cared enough about them to where I didn't want them to die, but I didn't really care what happened to them after the book concluded.  Though I must say really quickly that I did find the author's notes about where these young characters came from, and how they were based in reality pretty interesting.  Where I really got lost, was in the usage of some of the secondary characters.  I still don't get the point or the need behind the way a victim of the destruction is turned into a one dimensional villain that is almost killed off as soon as he starts to get dangerous.  I'm sure he had a usage in the forwarding of the story, I'm just still lost on what that was.

Now after all these words covering my whining about me not loving this book, I do have to say a few other things.  Though I promise to be quick about it.  I have another book by this author sitting on my bookcase right now, it's been there for a good year or two actually.  Reading this one has made my desire to read the other all that much stronger.  While I may not have cared for this type of story all that much, I loved the way this author puts a story together.  There is an ebb and flow to the narrative that I really enjoyed and I love the way he is able to bring a time period and a city to life in such vivid color.  It's an ability I admire and respect in an author so I never tire of reading their work  I also enjoyed his use of language and the actual crafting of storyline.  There is a natural order to the whole thing and the direction of the plot points were organic, not forced.  For those two reasons alone it was a pleasure to read, despite my lackluster response to it.

I would like to thank Lisa of  TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review this book.  Please visit the tour page so you can read other reviews.

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean

Synopsis From Dust Jacket:

Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)?  Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium (Cd, 48)?  How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation?  And why did tellurium (Te, 52) lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history?

The periodic table is one of our crowning scientific achievements, but it's also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession.  The fascinating tales in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, gold, and every single elements on the table as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, conflict, the arts, medicine, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.

Why did a little lithium (Li, 3) help cure poet Robert Lowell of his madness?  And how did gallium (Ga, 31) become the go-to element for laboratory pranksters?  The Disappearing Spoon has the answers, fusing science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, discovery, and alchemy, from the big bang through the end of time.

Why wasn't this book around when I was taking Chem I and Chem II in college?  I floundered in those classes.  If I remember right I only passed one test between both of them, and that was with a 61.  Thankfully I had a rather understanding professor who would call me into his office twice a semester and question me about what I was learning out of the class.  He gave me a C for each class.  Now would this book have helped me with my grades, I doubt it, but it would have made some of the math a little more understandable for me.

Now this isn't a hard science book at all, which you should be able to tell by the synopsis.  This was a fun romp, and more importantly for me a romp that was easy to understand, through the history of the periodic table.  It didn't just cover how and when every element was discovered but the personalities behind those doing the hard work.  I think I learned more about Marie Curie and other famous scientists in this book than I ever did in all the years of school.

The best part of this book though was how it brought the science to life.  It  helped you to understand the significance of each element through the specialness of each one.  It was science book rolled into a celebrity memoir and finished off with a great poly sci case study.  In what other book would I learn why India has such a problem with iodized salt and that aluminum (aluminium) used to be the most precious metal in the world.