Customer Reviews
Oliver Sacks history of chemistry, disguised as a biography: disappointing. - By: R. Britain, 29 Jul 2008 
After some years ago reading Sacks classic `The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat `I was keen to read something else. His biography seemed to be an intriguing option. Sadly I was very disappointed with this book. Although the title hints at an involvement with chemistry I did not expect the book to be almost entirely about chemistry & its history. I estimate that 95% of the book is concerned with this subject. There is little space given to detail of his actual life & absolutely no mention of psychology or neurology. Since this is of course the aspect of Sacks that attracts most people to his books this will be a complete surprise to most people. The detail of the history of chemistry is certainly too some extent interesting, but it becomes far too in-depth & specific. Unless you have an explicit interestin chemistry then this may well become somewhat tedious & boring, as it did for me. I finished the book feeling that I had learnt nothing new & gained little. Although the other reviews rate the book highly I can not help thinking that many people will ultimately be disappointed by this biography that is really anything but a biography. Had Sacks opted to scrap the small fraction of the book that relates to himself & his family & titled the book as a history of chemistry then it might be more appealing to an audience that might fully appreciate it.
The Metaphor of Chemistry - By: Dr. Philip J. Marriott, 02 Dec 2007 
Dr. Sacks has written a number books beautifully crafted around the fascinating neurological lives of his patients. And to an extentin them we can glimpse the limitations of neurololgyin providing finer & finer observations but until recent years only more limited clinical help.But Oliver Sacks has always managed this with an apparent self effacing humanity.
In Uncle Tungsten he turns the magnifying glass on himself & we watch his own growth & development through the metaphor of the Periodic Table of the Elements.
His humanity shone through & when I came to the end,too soon, I was so engrossed that I was uncertain whether I had been reading his autobiography or my own.
Calling all scientists - By: John, 06 Jul 2006 I adored this book. I got it from my local library & am now buying my own copy. However, I would add that I read chemistry at college & was recommended it by another chemist. It is not a particularly difficult book, I want my 14-year-old to read it, but it is much more chemistry than biography.
It also made me think about what is missing now the practical element has been taken from the education systemin the UK now; if you want to inspire a bright teenager this is the way to do it (I particularly like the passage about the 3lb lump of sodium & the local pond - I won't spoil it for non-chemists).
The biographical detail is interspersed with chemical passages & potted biographies of Sack's favourite chemists from the past. The thing that stood out the most though, was the sheer excitement of living through science as it was refined & discovered. There was no atom bomb when the book started, that came along the way. One of Sack's uncles had a scintillation gadget with a tiny amount of radioactive substance that emitted radiation you could see. There is an excitement & enthusiasm not foundin many books now.
As well as being gripped by the science, its application & the history, I found it an extremely well written book. I want to read his neurological books as a result.
Thank heaven for puberty's hormonal rush - By: Joseph Haschka, 27 Dec 2005 
"... I wanted to lay hands on cobaltite & niccolite, & compounds or minerals of manganese & molybdenum, of uranium & chromium ... I wanted to pulverize them, treat them with acid, roast them, reduce them - whatever was necessary - so I could extract their metals myself."
In the life of a pre-pubescent boy, whatever happened to the simple pleasures of sports, chasing girls to pull their pigtails, or playing cowboys & Indians?
UNCLE TUNGSTEN is the childhood memoir of Oliver Sacks, who, as the son of two physiciansin 1930s & 40s London, adopts more cerebral interests. Actually, let's call them obsessions, e.g., Mendeleev's Table of the Elements:
"I copied it into my exercise book & carried it everywhere ... I spent hours now, enchanted, totally absorbed, wandering, making discoveries,in the enchanted garden of Mendeleev."
Oliver's propensity for intellectual pursuits was further encouraged by his two maternal uncles, Dave & Abe, two scientist/business entrepreneurs, the former nicknamed UNCLE TUNGSTEN for his preoccupation with that element & his process for manufacturing tungsten light bulbs.
This engaging & instructive volume is the author's narrative of his life from age 6 to 15, beginningin 1939 at the beginning of WWII, when he was protectively sent out of London to a boarding school. Returningin 1943, he set up his own household lab & began experimenting with a vengeance, his chief interest being metals & their properties. The text is leavened with descriptions of his home life, his parents & brothers, & summaries of the achievements of giantsin the field of Chemistry: John Dalton, Robert Boyle, the Curies, Antoine Lavoisier, Dmitri Mendeleev, Ernest Rutherford, Michael Faraday, & others. UNCLE TUNGSTEN is a short, popular history of the science.
I'm not awarding 5 stars because obsessions, especially someone else's, can become tiresome. Even Oliver's parents, responsible as any for his scientific curiosity, could be driven to distraction. At one point on a family auto trip, the young Sacks blathers on about one of his favorite elements for twenty minutesin the back seat until his father shouts, "Enough about thallium!"
By the age of 15, Oliver's preoccupation with chemistry began to ebb as the hormones of adolescence began to flow. The boy, becoming a young man, discovers music & sex. Those then around him should thank the Almighty for puberty; he was becoming an insufferable eccentric. He grew up to be a neurologist.
Not the book you expect - By: Preacherdoc, 28 Mar 2005 
This is a childhood memoir from Oliver Sacks.
I've been an admirer of Sacks for years: it's clear from his books that he has a scintillating intelligence which he applies indiscriminately, not just to medicine, but art, music, literature, philosophy, & sciences of all kinds.
I bought this book (early Christmas present to myself) to gain more insight into the man.
Three quarters of the book is a history of the development of chemistry, which Sacks had a passion for as a boy (aided by two of his uncles especially). This is all very well, & is toldin Sacks' very readable style, but it leaves me wanting more background to Sacks himself. Reading through his other books (I have the lot) one sees only tantalising glimpses of the man behind the words: I had hoped this book might provide the personal information I had wanted. Sadly, I was disappointed.
Even sifting through what we get, there are some very disturbing glimpses into his childhood.
His mother (an obstetrician & professor of anatomy) would sometimes bring home malformed foetuses which had died at birth, or been drowned by her "like a kitten" shortly afterwards. These she encourages the (13-year old!) Sacks to dissect, & would teach him about anatomy all the while.
Later she arranges for him to dissect the body of a teenage girl at the local medical school under the supervision of "Professor G".
Sacks goes on holiday to the seaside with his family. He is given a large live octopus as a gift by a fisherman, & keeps itin the family bath, where he talks of how he feeds it live crabs & it changes colour because it seems to recognise him. The maid comes into the bathroom one day & kills the octopus with a broom handlein a panic. Sacks, of course, then dissects his beloved pet & keeps parts of it preservedin jars on his shelves for many years.
While it seems pretty clear that Sacks had a very precocious intellect, & was probably streets ahead of his peersin terms of intelligence, I find these incidents very disturbing.
The more I read Sacks, the more I think that perhaps there are unpleasant depths to his character that this book gives us only a hint of.
As a description of chemistry, this book is entertaining enough. As a glimpse into the life of Oliver Sacks, it is both inadequate & troubling.
