Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc

"Fascinating and beautiful . . . if only chemistry had been like this at school." -Matt Ridley, New York Times-bestselling author of Genome, in Prospect magazine

Like the alphabet, the calendar, or the zodiac, the periodic table of the chemical elements has a permanent place in our imagination. But aside from the handful of common ones (iron, carbon, copper, gold), the elements themselves remain wrapped in mystery. We do not know what most of them look like, how they exist in nature, how th...