The Elements We Live By: How Iron Helps Us Breathe, Potassium Lets Us See, and Other Surprising Superpowers of the Periodic Table

An around-the-world journey to discover where in the wild we can find the elements of life and the surprising ways they're essential to our survival

We all know that we depend on elements for survival—from the oxygen in the air we breathe to the carbon in the molecular structures of all living things. But we don't often stop to appreciate how, say, phosphorous holds our DNA together or how potassium powers our optic nerves so that we can see.

In The Elements We Live By, physicist and award-wi...