Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English

INGREDIENTS

George Zaidan

The Strange Chemistry of What We Put In Us and On US

This is a humorous scientific exploration of the materials we take from the natural world and the ways modern chemistry turns them into products like Cheetos, Windex, and lipstick.

For our ancestors who lived thousands of years ago, the question wasn't whether to use "natural" or "processed" products, but how to survive. They processed nature to feed and protect the next generation. But we do so much more. We try to engineer foods to have more addictive tastes, or more interesting textures. We try to engineer human attraction with makeup. We try to eradicate disease with drugs. All this processing may be impacting our health as individuals and as a species. So it's long past time to ask ourselves: has processing crossed a line? Are we changing nature too much?

Zaidan, an MIT-trained chemist who cohosted CNBC's hit Make Me a Millionaire Inventor and wrote and voiced several TED-Ed viral videos, makes chemistry more fun than Hogwarts as he reveals exactly what science can (and can't) tell us about the packaged ingredients sold to us every day. Sugar, spinach, formaldehyde, cyanide, the ingredients of life and death, and how we know if something is good or bad for us - as well as the genius of aphids and their butts - are all discussed in exquisite detail at breakneck speed.

George Zaidan is a science communicator, television and web host, and producer. He created National Geographic's webseries Ingredients, and he cowrote and directed MIT's webseries Science Out Loud. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, The Boston Globe, National Geographic Magazine, NPR's The Salt, NBC's Cosmic Log, Science, Business Insider, and Gizmodo. He is currently executive producer at the American Chemical Society. INGREDIENTS is his first book.

Available products
Book Published 2020-04-14 by Dutton
Book Published 2020-04-14 by Dutton

Comments

At last, a book on nutrition that tries to make you understand how little we know instead of offering blanket prognostications. If instead of a simple solution, you want a guide to how to think about health, this is it.

George Zaidan's mix of razor-sharp wit and pin-point accuracy are rarer in science than a T-Rex performing nuclear fusion. Ingredients has the answers to age-old questions - how many Oreos is too many Oreos? - and many more you never thought to ask. Like an optometrist performing stand-up, Zaidan is eye-opening and hilarious.

If you crossed Bill Nye with Stephen Colbert, you'd get George Zaidan. Ingredients is a masterful piece of science writing.

Ingredients has all the ingredients I'm looking for in a science book: it's chock full of interesting information, it reveals the science behind an everyday subjectand it's written in a breezy, easy-to-understand voiceand it's funny! I can't recommend it enough.

If you ever thought that chemistry might be really interesting (it is), but your eyes glazed over in high school chem class, this is the book for you. George Zaidan will keep you laughing out loud as he shares the wonders of our most useful, practical science, with brilliant analogies that even an 11-year old can understand.

By all means, pick up George Zaidan's high-octane Ingredients if you want to know more about Cheetos, sunscreen, butter substitutes, and other fascinating bits of everyday chemistry. But above all, you should buy Ingredients because it teaches you how to think better - like a smart, informed, and wickedly funny scientist.

When I taught a writing intensive course for nutrition and food science seniors, the main objectives were how to read scientific papers critically and how to argue effectively in print. I thought several times while reading this book that, rather than using peer-reviewed papers, I wish I could have had this book for my students. Pick any argument George makes and tell me, with references, why you agree or disagree. They probably would have learned more that way and certainly would have enjoyed their reading more.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that food is very important, and yet we are terrible at talking about it. Nutrition is a mess of marketing, classism, science, truth, guilt, confusion, and outright hucksterism. Ingredients lifts the film from our eyes with humor and reassurance.

Omfg this book is FABULOUS! It's hilarious, insightful, sassy, and reassuring. A delightful roller-coaster of science communication.

Through incredibly weird and wonderful analogies (and delightfully nerdy wit), George helps you understand how scientists work toward the truth. I wish he'd rewrite all of my high school science textbooks!

Everything in our lives is made of chemicals. But unfortunately very few of us are chemists. Ingredients is a road map for navigating the confusing polysyllabic world we find in product labels and in viral news stories. Zaidan's blend of humor and science will not only make you a better-informed consumer of all things chemical. Ingredients will also make you appreciate the chemistry that makes our world possible.

Ingredients is a friendly introduction to the chemistry behind our health, but it's also a compelling portrait of how science is conducted and knowledge is built. Turns out, Cheetos and the scientific method have something in common: there's a lot going on, and not everyone knows what. George does a masterful job of showing where chemistry can answer questions about our health and environment, and where it - as well science in general - is lead by politics, culture and even *gasp* opinion.

UK & C: Duckworth/Prelude ; China: CITIC ; Estland: AS Aripaev ; Japan: Kagaku Dojin Publishing ; Korean: Sigongsa ; Polish: Marginesy ; Romanian: Editura Niculescu ; Russian: Eksmo ; Ukrainian: Vivat