Science · Similar reads
Books like The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table
The best books like The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table are A Short History of Nearly Everything, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, and A Brief History of Time. The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table by Sam Kean is about chemistry, scientific discovery, history of science. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- A Short History of Nearly Everything
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson · Science
A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's attempt to understand the scientific story of everything — from the Big Bang to the emergence of modern humans — by spending three years talking to scientists and reading science history.
A kindred science read.
Read the summary → - Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
02
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Richard P. Feynman · Memoir
Surely You're Joking, Mr.
A kindred science read.
Read the summary → - A Brief History of Time
03
Stephen Hawking · Science
A Brief History of Time is Stephen Hawking's attempt to explain the biggest questions in physics — where the universe came from, how it behaves, and where it might be going — to readers with no scientific training.
A kindred science read.
Read the summary →
- Bad Science
04
Ben Goldacre · Science
Bad Science is Ben Goldacre's dissection of how scientific evidence gets misrepresented, distorted, and invented in the service of selling health products, generating media coverage, and protecting bad actors from accountability.
A kindred science read.
Read the summary → - The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science
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The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science
Richard Holmes · History
Richard Holmes is a British literary biographer best known for his two-volume life of Shelley, and The Age of Wonder brings that literary sensibility to the history of science during the Romantic period — roughly 1769 to 1832.
Shares scientific discovery and history of science with The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table.
Read the summary → - Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
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Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Mary Roach · Science
Bonk is Mary Roach's investigation into the science of human sexuality — not the pop psychology of relationships, but the actual research: what scientists have done inside laboratory settings to understand how sex works, what they've discovered, and why the field has been so difficult to pursue given institutional and cultural resistance.
Both dig into history of science.
Read the summary → - Chaos: Making a New Science
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James Gleick · Science
Chaos: Making a New Science, published in 1987, tells the story of how a loose network of scientists working across meteorology, mathematics, biology, and physics in the 1960s and 1970s developed chaos theory — the study of systems that are deterministic but unpredictable because tiny differences in initial conditions produce wildly different outcomes.
Both dig into scientific discovery.
Read the summary → - Fermat's Enigma
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Simon Singh · Science
In 1637, Pierre de Fermat scrawled a note in the margin of a mathematics book claiming to have found a proof that no three positive integers can satisfy the equation a^n + b^n = c^n for any integer value of n greater than 2 — but that the margin was too narrow to contain it.
Both dig into history of science.
Read the summary → - Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
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Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
Suzanne Simard · Science
Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who discovered that trees communicate and share resources through underground mycorrhizal fungal networks — the research that gave rise to the concept of the "mother tree" and, at several removes, Peter Wohlleben's popular writing on the subject.
Both dig into scientific discovery.
Read the summary → - Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
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Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
Mary Roach · Science
Gulp traces the alimentary canal from mouth to colon, using Mary Roach's standard method: firsthand visits to the researchers who work in each region, archival accounts of the stranger experiments in medical history, and a consistent willingness to ask the embarrassing questions that more decorous science writing leaves out.
Both dig into history of science.
Read the summary → - Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning
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Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning
Aleksandrov, Kolmogorov & Lavrent'ev · Science
Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning is a three-volume survey of mathematics compiled by a group of eminent Soviet mathematicians, originally published in Russian in 1956 and translated into English by the American Mathematical Society in 1963.
Both dig into history of science.
Read the summary → - Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
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Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
Mary Roach · Science
Packing for Mars is Mary Roach's investigation into the unglamorous human problems of spaceflight: what happens to the body in zero gravity, how astronauts eat and sleep and go to the bathroom, what zero-g does to bones and muscles and the vestibular system, and how engineers have spent decades solving problems that are embarrassing to discuss but essential to solve.
Both dig into history of science.
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Books like The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table: quick answers
What are the best books like The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table?
The best books like The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table by Sam Kean are A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table, such as chemistry, scientific discovery, history of science.
What should I read after The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table?
A natural next read after The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table is A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. A kindred science read. Other strong choices are Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.
What books are similar to The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table by Sam Kean?
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table centers on chemistry, scientific discovery, history of science. Books with a similar feel include A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
