Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century
Posted by admin in Plastics Engineering Books, tags: Century, Making, plastic, Synthetic
Product Description
Prophylactics to polystyrene, viscose to Velcro, saran to cellophane: For better or worse, we’re married to plastic. In your refrigerator, your closet, your car it’s everywhere, and it’s not going away. You eat with it, work with it, play with it. Often, you even breathe it. Cheap, pliable, easily made, eminently democratic, it symbolizes everything that’s both wrong and right with our culture.
In Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century, Stephen Fenichell takes a fresh, irreverent look at the substance we all love to hate. The book moves from the early astonishment at such inventions as celluloid film and waterproof clothing, to the nylon-stocking riots after World War II, to the revolutionary yet practical proliferation of Tupperware in the ’50s. Fenichell’s sweeping assessment of the social and economic revolutions brought on by plastic extends from the sublime to the absurd, the beautiful to the mundane, demonstrating how scientists, artists, politicians and the buying public have all molded, and also been molded, by plastic.
By turns a hero and a villain, a useless fad, an essential commodity, plastic is the ideal indicator of how people think and live. With clarity, wit and deadpan accuracy, Fenichell narrates a rollicking story about the thrills, chills and accidental spills that led to the development of plastic, about the scientists and corporations who got rich (or went bankrupt) creating and selling synthetics, and about the surprising invention that has shaped our world.Amazon.com Review
Perhaps Dustin Hoffman should have paid attention to that unsolicited investment advice in “The Graduate.” Plastics really are the future. Indeed these smooth oil-based synthetic polymers, available in a spectrum from rainbow-colored through raindrop transparent, are already so ubiquitous in our lives that we barely notice them. Expertly and entertainingly, Stephen Fenichell draws our attention to these shape-shifting substances; he tells us the names (do you know your polypropylene from your butadiene?), and the social history and cultural legacy of a diverse family of materials that has been given a bad rap–or maybe “wrap” is the word.
Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century
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One would expect a history of plastic to be full of dreary minutia, of interest only to professional chemists. You couldn’t be more wrong. The author is to be congratulated for taking a topic that could be dull and turning it into a historical account of how these substances have impacted our lives. Don’t get me wrong, I am no lover of plastic but there are applications that require materials with the properties found in modern plastics. You just don’t realize how crucial these substances are until you read this book.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is a scholarly, tongue in cheek, thoroughly enjoyable peon to the most despicable of substances. Histories of science and industry could learn much from Mr. Fenichill’s pleasing blend of knowledge and humor. This is one of my favorite books.
Rating: 5 / 5
Ever wonder about where things come from, how did they discover nylon, rayon, bakelite, tupperware, saran wrap? This book has the answers. Very readable.
Rating: 5 / 5
Fenichell is highly readable. He has appreciation for inventors who have developed new materials for the service of society. His book offers a balanced perspective, coupled with engaging anecdotes. Well done!
Rating: 4 / 5
I came across this book by accident,while travelling. The colorful cover caught my eye, but soon after reading a few chapters I was hooked. It’s the perfect beach book. Plastic is now a word that can conjure the idea of “cheap” or “fake” but it was not always so. Fenichell starts us at the beginning of the discovery of the various materials like man-made rubber and other things we now take for granted, and tells the story of each innovation as though we are standing there in the lab and the inventor yells “Eureka!” Stories about the inventors range from funny (you know Goodyear is going to eventually succeed because of his famous name, but he has many misadventures before success arrives) to poignant, in the stories where someone desperately wants to achieve fame and fortune but their “plastic” product fails to catch on and their name disappears into oblivion.
My only criticism is the chapter on my grandfather, who plays a prominent role in the history of plastic. Fenichell simplifies and distorts some of the facts about my grandfather’s company, but I forgive him in that it makes the reading light and entertaining in the end (well, a couple of chapters get bogged down by technical explanations of certain chemical processes). This is a book for anyone interested in American history, sociology,and pop psychology: plastics of all kinds make up an inextricable part of every aspect of our daily lives.
Rating: 4 / 5