The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
Published 2010 · 240 pages · 110,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · History, Nonfiction, Science & Nature
How hard is The Disappearing Spoon to read?
The Disappearing Spoon scores 22 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 32 out of 100
- Chemistry terminology explained with humor. Accessible popular science.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- Chemical concepts grounded in vivid historical stories.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Dense with scientific facts, biographical detail, and historical context.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Each chapter focuses on an element or group. Direct storytelling.
- Symbolic density: 100 out of 100
- The periodic table is an organizing framework. Otherwise literal.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Kean writes with humor and a taste for ironic historical details.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- Each chapter completes its story.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- Organized loosely by the periodic table. Clear chapter structure.
How The Disappearing Spoon is regarded
The Disappearing Spoon holds a literary regard score of 34 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.