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The Poisoner’s (paperback) giveaway
My book, The Poisoner’s Handbook, came out in paperback this week. My publisher kept the beautiful cover – my all time favorite – with the test-tube glowing like a moon over 1920s New York City and the...
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Plants, platypuses, poisons and, oh yes, paperbacks
Why do I feel this sudden urge to plant a poison garden? Oh, nothing on the scale of the one at Britain’s Alnswick Castle (provocative gates pictured at left), but at least a leafy border full of...
View ArticleThe Amazing Exploding Classroom
Some years ago, my older son enrolled – with some reluctance – in a summer chemistry camp. On the second day, while conducting an experiment, he and his fellow students accidentally, um, set the...
View ArticleLife in the Undark
This is the second of a three-part “series” on the Radium Girls, the young workers who painted luminous watch faces during the 1920s – and unknowingly became some of the first human test subjects on...
View ArticleA Dazzle in the Bones
This is the last of a three-part “series” on the Radium Girls, the young workers who painted luminous watch faces during the 1920s – and unknowingly became some of the first human test subjects on the...
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A lost girl, remembered
When I was researching my book, The Poisoner’s Handbook, I started by making a list of famous homicidal poisons: cyanide and strychnine, arsenic and antimony and…and…the resulting catalog quickly...
View ArticleAn Almost Perfect Murder
In the fall of 1923, an out-of-work painter in New York City named Harry Freindlich took out a $1,000 life insurance policy on his 28-year-old wife Leah and then smothered her in bed. It’s not a...
View ArticlePeriodic craziness
I’ve been helping my younger son study the Periodic Table of the Elements for a chemistry test. One of us is embarrassingly enthusiastic about this. “Po!” I announce. “Polonium! Now that was named by...
View ArticleThe Science of Mysteries: Instructions for A Deadly Dinner
One day on Twitter, some science bloggers who began life on the dark side, in the humanities, happily discovered a shared taste for classic mystery writers. We thought we might write a series of...
View ArticleThe Chemical Me (2011 edition)
In the last week, some of the best science bloggers in the country have put together lists of their favorite pieces done in 2011. My fellow PLoS blogger, John Rennie, has put together an astonishingly...
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