The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean

Subtitled and other lost tales of Love, War, and Genius, as written by our genetic code Kean in his most recent book has done the same for DNA and Biology that he did earlier for the Periodic Table in The Disappearing Spoon.

As a former struggling Biology, Chemistry, well any Science really, student, I now have developed an interest to understand all of the things that I missed the first time through.

Kean does a thoroughly fantastic job in this book bringing his subjects to life. The Violinist's Thumb focuses on DNA and Genetics and as per usual for me and Kean books I found myself cornering my wife and family members with bits of information that I had gleaned from the book.

Of course the material, even lightened in Kean's special way, is still muddy. My brain does not attach to the material as well as it does, say, batting averages, but I am happy to say that it does with effort compute.

The first section of the book focuses on the passing of DNA and traits, both the processes, and the history of their discoveries. As a person with a genetic condition, a recessive one at that, which proves my unluckiness in the genetic lottery, I found the process of how these traits are passed down interesting and informative. It is not all dry material either. No one really wants to know this but we still learn how our in our ancient microbial past we ingested a bug, yes a bug, and that bug ingestion led to a division of labor inside of us that mirrors photosynthesis in plants.

We learn about human evolutionary bottlenecks, these indicate times when humans nearly went extinct. These bottlenecks are what leads to DNA similarities in races and groups of people. If the population shrinks or is isolated in some way future populations will all have common ancestors.

Clearly Kean's books have a market. They are reviewed and reviewed well by the major publications, and do well in the nonfiction lists. I must not be the only person who finds this subject matter interesting. It should be quite sometime before he runs out of subject matter too. With the physics explosion, and things like the Higgs Bosun news perhaps physics will be next.

One thing is for certain my family will know what to expect when the next book comes out. As my wife told my daughter " just not your head, act interested and say Wow at the appropriate times." Clearly by these comments yes these books have a market but no not everyone is interested. It is just that now, unlike high school, I am on the science nerd's team.

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean

This book made my head hurt. The sub title is and other true tales of madness, love, and the history of the world from The Periodic Table of the Elements.

I never took Chemistry that I can remember and so my exposure to the Periodic Table is what my son tells me and hearing Tom Lehrer sing about them years ago on The Dr Demento show. However I am always wanting to learn new things.

This book reminded me of Bill Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything which I have read a couple of times and treat at times like a reference book.

The first 100 pages of this book held me and I learned somethings I did not know about protons, nuetrons and electrons. I think I have a basic understanding of how electrons move from element to element and the sharing and combining of chemicals. I still am lost however. The book written for the uneducated still made my head hurt. I still do not know how they count the atoms in a n element to know how to place it on the chart.

The stories of various scientists were interesting. One of the most interesting quotes was that Hydrogen makes up 90 percent of the universe's matter and helium 10 percent. Everything else including all the metals on earth and presumably the rest of the planets is an rounded off amount of the total 100 percent. That puts us in perspective.

A good book. I enjoyed it. But perhaps the time for learning this stuff is when you don't want to and your brains are better when you are young.