Wednesday, July 27, 2022

kitchen chemistry and quirky impacts

I've reviewed two very different books for C&I in recent months, and as it happens the two reviews appear side by side in the July/August issue, pp34-35.

Firstly, the very lovely science-in-fiction or lablit novel:

Lessons in chemistry
Bonnie Garmus
Doubleday, 2022
ISBN 978-0-8575-2812-4

Which I am pleased to see has found a lot of attention elsewhere too, so you may already have heard about it or even read it. If not, do.

And secondly, an account on how meteorites impact life on Earth and especially humanity:

Impact: How rocks from space led to life, culture and Donkey Kong
Greg Brennecka
William Morrow 2022
ISBN 978-0-06-307892-5

Meteorite impacts are of course hugely important for astrobiology, while some of the pop culture things that the author obsesses about are not, so for a more sober account of the actual science of meteorites, I might turn to Colliding worlds by Simone Marchi instead, which I reviewed recently, too. Impact might attract some who are intereted in the quirkiness though.

Paywalled PDF containing both reviews

See also my twitter thread listing books I read in 2022.

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