Customer Reviews

The Genie in the Bottle: 64 All New Commentaries on the Fascinating Chemistry of Everyday Life

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book demonstrates how seemingly impractical ideas made it
into implementation in the areas of organic and inorganic
chemistry. At first, silly puddy was deemed an impractical
idea with very little commercial application outside the
laboratory. It turned out to be a multi-million dollar idea.
Baking soda was not seen as a practical idea initially, although
most homes have it today. The concept of drinking urine to
heal arthritis was deemed to be bizarre; however, there is
some scientific validity to the concept according to the author.
Arthritis may be relieved by keeping raisins in gin for 9 days.
GLA, primrose oil and chicken cartilage are all helpful
complementary strategies to controlling arthritis. Vaseline
oil was not seen as a great idea initially. Its inventor,
Robert Chesebrough created an enduring legacy with the product.
Chlorinated drinking water saved millions from bacterial diseases. This work describes many of the most promising inventions and processes in chemistry. It would be a perfect
reference for a student project. The book is a good value for the price charged. Its contents could make great conversation
at any dinner table.

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in knowing a little more about chemicals and their place in the world. Through his stories, Schwarcz explains how chemicals are used in our everyday lives and how very often they are given a "negative impact" as not being natural. He shows how media and others have made chemicals appear to always be bad yet at the same time these agencies neglect the overwhelming good of chemistry! This book is not about bashing media but rather to inform the reader of the global story and the truth about many of the so-called "toxins" in our world. It is a truly interesting book that is light hearted in its style so that it will please both the scientist as well as the non-scientist!
Finally, if you ever get to see "The Magic of Chemistry" or take "The World of Chemistry" course at McGill ... they are also highly recommended!

Here is a book for everyone who has a natural scientific curiosity - a well-written and entertaining look at the chemistry of everyday life. Dr. Schwarz has taken Chemistry, food and magic tricks and rolled them all together in order to create an entertaining read.

To name just a few of the topics covered.

While cooking peas- how can you make them more GREEN - and why does it work

The chemical benefits of flax seed oil

Why magicians can NOT bend things with thought power alone.

The history of Mercury poisoning

Why things are "hot" to taste and how this can be used against bugs


As you can see the list of topics is both broad and entertaining. Amazingly, Dr. Schwarz does not get us caught up in very in-depth chemical equations/reactions. This is book written for someone with scientific curiosity not necessary a Masters in Science!

I definitely recommend "The Genie in the Bottle" - and I also give it as an endorsement to be used as bed time stories to your children, for it is these types of short essays on chemistry that may spark the love of the sciences in your child!

This book contains more than five dozen articles each describing some chemical substance, how it was discovered and how it became useful. All interesting and many clearly explained. Each piece of knowledge, however, is encased long texts straining to be funny. Any trick, preferably cute, is acceptable if it seems it will make the reader smile. Thus, chapters with titles such as "Oil You Need to Know" or "Willow Power", little anecdotes, references to famous names, closely or not associated with subject at hand. So much extraneous material weighs heavily on the final text. If the reader is patient and has little else to do, this may the book, if he is also interested in chemistry.

This is one of the best popular science books I have ever read, and the best chemistry book. Dr Schwarz explains numerous chemistry topics amidst a background of truly interesting stories. I recommend this book to everyone with any interest in science.

This is not a typical chemistry book. Dr. Schwarcz has several interesing stories such at the background of Thalidomide and the origin of the term "snake oil". About half the book is on food and health related topics. It's a fast read and should be interesting to anyone interested in science, health or history. The Dr. has his own radio show on science so the topics are designed to entertain a wide audience. The commentaries are short and make sense in any order. I liked is so much I'm planning on reading one of Dr. Schwarcz's other collections of commentaries.

This is a fun little book that is exactly what the sub-heading on the book says it is: 67 commentaries on the fascinating chemistry of everyday life. I work as a chemist and I did enjoy reading this book.

The book is broken up into 5 main sections. There is a section on Health Matters, Food Matters, Chemistry Everywhere, learning from the past, and Silly stories. The Health Matters and Food Matters are the most organized sections of the book. The mini-stories in the these two sections deal exclusively with health or food. Each section had a collection of short anecdotes. The anecdotes average at 3-4 pages per length with some being shorter and a few being significantly longer.

This book is definitely geared more toward the average joe than to a chemist. That being said, there is enough chemistry addressed to interest your everyday chemist too. I was a bit disappointed that I had heard a lot of these stories before; they are things I've read about in headlines or just have general knowledge of. But for everything I had heard of there were two things I hadn't heard about.

There is a lot of fun miscellaneous information in this book. Depending on how much of that you want to retain this book could be a quick or a slow read. I personally had trouble reading large portions of it at once because it was just so much information to assimilate. Especially in the later sections the anecdotes tend to jump around willy, nilly. You may be reading about how Hydrogen was discovered then, in the next anecdote, you are reading about Silly Putty. I found that I enjoyed the book (and remembered all the fun facts) the best when I read a few anecdotes a day.

The writing style is done very well. There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor and there are a lot of cleverly worded passages. This is a chemistry book that will amuse and interest everyone. I personally applaud it for bringing chemistry to the masses. Chemistry is awesome and interesting; and it is wonderful that Schwarcz can make it interesting for everyone. I plan on checking out his additional collections of chemistry anecdotes in the future.

If you would like to know what the things around you are made of, read Joe Schwarcz' entertaining books. He warns you of real hazards and make you laugh at our silly notions about every day things we all take for granted. Great for your junior high student. They might become scientists or engineers!

If you've been seeing my name pop up everywhere reviewing this author, you can tell how much I've enjoyed reading his work! He's got a terrific sense of humor and a genuine love for teaching the fascinating science of chemistry.

I am teach chemistry 110 and beginning lab classes for chemistry in our local community college. As my background is mainly in human biology and neuroscience, I've been boning up some on my chemistry, even though I took like ten chemistry classes. One thing I've noticed is especially in teaching three hour classes for chemistry, is the students tend to start going into daze mode about half way between. It ends up being too much scientific information given through textbooks too boringly. I've always used history of science to make things more interesting...for example, when we get into the making of the atom bomb, I tell them about the mission made into Norway in WWII to bomb the Nazi's only site of heavy water (Hydrogen with a neutron in the nucleus) to be used to make their own bombs. At least for the guys, this manages to perk things up...for the girls it is a little bit harder to find information that is relevant to them now and to their future jobs which for most of them will be nursing.

This book was recommended to me, and though it deserves a five for fun reading and good writing, it didn't have exactly what I was looking for. I think I had more in mind a book with the periodical chart of the chemicals and interesting stories going through the chart...that wasn't the case with this book. There are some stories I can use in there, especially on acetone, and I always use stories where doctors use themselves as guinea pigs, or stories of really stupid stunts done in the name of science just for a laugh. Schwarcz obviously has made a living out of collecting this stuff...I'm pretty sure I saw him either on PBS or Discovery channel once with some physicists who were doing things along the same line.

Science doesn't need to be mind-numbingly boring, yet so many teachers make it that way, even in college. In college so much emphasis is placed on the math, that the cool part of chemistry gets lost in the student's mind as they stumble through just trying to pass the tests. When that happens you know the students haven't learned a thing and are going to forget this stuff as soon as they leave the room. The bigwigs in education, at the NSF and the NIH wonder why American kids are doing poorly in science...well, the textbooks are often not only badly written...they often have wrong information, with wrong problems and wrong answers in them from proofreading done incorrectly. In the press to test, we leave out the necessary component of 'learning', and in order to learn, the information must be given in the right manner.

This book is definitely a keeper, and I will use it, and I am hoping I get guided to some more books more along the line I was looking for...

Karen sadler,
Science Education,
Pennsylvania