Customer Reviews

The Chemical Tree: A History of Chemistry

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The subject matter that Brock takes on is historically complex and rich. Unfortunately, he responds to this challenge by adopting an aloof and arrogant style in describing and detailing some of the problems. His prose and word choice is often needlessly prolix and his descriptions of many of the chemical problems were incomplete. As a Ph.D. chemist, I became suspicious of his treatment of the early history of chemistry and became more and more suspicious as the book progressed into the modern era (with which I am quite familiar). There are many mistakes in his descriptions of chemistry--though some of these seemed to be the result of bad type setting or proofreading. This book would be an impossible read for someone without a background in chemistry-there are simply too many intellectual gaps that the reader must be prepared to fill in. It is as though the author assumed that by expressing a few ideas and facts about each problem the epistemological relationships would become self-evident. This approach rarely succeeds here. A close read by a historian might also reveal an occasional Whiggish streak in his analysis of some of the events.
With this said, I did find the book interesting and informative enough to read it in its entirety. I was particularly ignorant of the history of chemical education before reading it. The disappointment that I've expressed here lies in its promise-I consider it a good first draft. But I wonder, where was the editor?

Poorly written, poorly edited (was it edited?) and painful reading, although the topic of the history of chemistry deserves exploration and could have been made much more interesting and accessible than it was here. The writer is an overly wordy name-dropper, writing over the heads of the average science person, failing to adequately explain identities, information, and uncommon terminology before moving on. Our college class finally gave up on this book and resorted to the use of another text.

In short:

This is the most engaging book of history of chemistry that I have ever read. It is technical sometimes, but if you have a good high school chemistry it will be OK.