Sam Kean grew up in South Dakota, which means more to him than it probably should. He went to college in Minnesota, studied physics, taught for a few years, tried to move to Spain (it didn't take), and ended up in Washington, D.C. His book, The Disappearing Spoon: And other true tales of madness, love, and the history of the world from the periodic table of the elements is available from Little, Brown in July 2010.Email: samkean [at] gmail.com
When it comes to evolution these days, scientists tend to present a uniform front of agreement for political and rhetorical reasons, so you maybe didn’t know that, in private, some theoretical biologists have grawlix-laced thoughts about certain colleagues, whose work on one issue in particular they regard as not only wrong but stubbornly, perversely so,…
On somehow failing to rentmy apartment for Inauguration. Little boys crave taking sides for battles and banding together into little gangs, yet whenever I begged my father to tell me which side we wanted to win in football games on television (about as far as my notion of being a warrior extended then), he would…
Bookstores don’t often make people’s heads snap around, but there’s a lot of competition along Venice’s engorged thoroughfare, Salizada del Fontego dei Tedeschi. Amid the temptations of gelato for breakfast and designer Italian clothes, anything less opulent than the window display at La Carta would go ignored. The window was a triptych set back from…