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The Day That Lightning Chased the Housewife: And Other Mysteries of Science
Essays consider the leading scientific theories on questions that continue to elude modern science, such as the mind, biology, health, plants and animals, the Earth, the universe, physics, and natural phenomena
- GenresScienceNonfiction
246 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 14, 2024
I picked this up awhile back at a library book sale, without looking too closely at it. If I had, I'd have noticed there's no bibliography--which in a nonfiction book, is almost always an immediate kiss of death for me. This is no exception.
All this book is, is a collection of...calling them "essays" is overly generous, as few are more than three pages long. The Day That Lightning Chased the Housewife is an assortment of idle musings by people who may as well be anonymous. I have no idea who Bruce Fellman, or Lynn J. Cave are, nor why I should assume they have any authority in the subjects they're talking about at all. No one is identified as, say, Steve Olson, PhD in Biology at UC Berkeley, or anything--just Steve Olson. So this book is a rare example of not only failing to cite sources for references in the text, but barely citing where the text, itself, came from. It's mind-bogglingly lazy.
Especially when you pare it with the as-written baseless assertions presented throughout this book. E.g. "In one study, XX male mice were found to lack the H-Y antigen." What study? By whom? "On the other hand, a young musical composer suffered damage to the right hemisphere of his brain...he had lost all interest in composition [and] even lost much of his enjoyment in listening to music." Sucks for that guy...whoever the hell he was, because we're never even given a name to go along with this story.
The entire bloody book is filled with stuff like this: empty claims, nameless subjects, presented in snippets too short to be gratifying, in tones that aren't even entertaining. There might be a few (likely outdated) scientific musings to be found in the meandering nothingness of these pages (hence the 2 stars instead of 1), but I don't think it's worth the effort to ferret them out.
All this book is, is a collection of...calling them "essays" is overly generous, as few are more than three pages long. The Day That Lightning Chased the Housewife is an assortment of idle musings by people who may as well be anonymous. I have no idea who Bruce Fellman, or Lynn J. Cave are, nor why I should assume they have any authority in the subjects they're talking about at all. No one is identified as, say, Steve Olson, PhD in Biology at UC Berkeley, or anything--just Steve Olson. So this book is a rare example of not only failing to cite sources for references in the text, but barely citing where the text, itself, came from. It's mind-bogglingly lazy.
Especially when you pare it with the as-written baseless assertions presented throughout this book. E.g. "In one study, XX male mice were found to lack the H-Y antigen." What study? By whom? "On the other hand, a young musical composer suffered damage to the right hemisphere of his brain...he had lost all interest in composition [and] even lost much of his enjoyment in listening to music." Sucks for that guy...whoever the hell he was, because we're never even given a name to go along with this story.
The entire bloody book is filled with stuff like this: empty claims, nameless subjects, presented in snippets too short to be gratifying, in tones that aren't even entertaining. There might be a few (likely outdated) scientific musings to be found in the meandering nothingness of these pages (hence the 2 stars instead of 1), but I don't think it's worth the effort to ferret them out.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews