A Cultural History of the Elements - from Arsenic to Zinc

I was hoping for a more technical / scientific elaboration of the periodic chart; it is, truly, a cultural history. I should have considered the title a little more closely; my fault, not the author's. For what he's trying to write . . . a cultural as opposed to a scientific treatise, he accomplishes the task well.

British but somewhat dry. I was hoping more for how the elements were made (in stars) not who discovered them on earth. As a chemist, I did find some of it interesting, but the side stories were distracting.

I was disappointed in this book, although part of the problem might be that it compares poorly to Primo Levi's _The Periodic Table_, which is a world-class masterpiece. So perhaps I am being unfair. But still: disappointing.

A whimsical account of several of the elements in the periodic table. We get some social culture and some history of science. What makes this a pretty charming book is its style of writing. It is written in a personal and very readable way. It is not at all encyclopaedic so don't expect too much if you're looking for something serious. This is a great read on a long-haul fight or when you just want to kill some time and don't mind picking up some marginal knowledge along the way. You don't need any chemistry knowledge to enjoy this book. The book is hardcover, but is printed on low quality paperback paper, so it probably makes good sense to wait for the pocket edition. For the content of the book I would rate it four stars.

UPDATE: A more visual approach is found in The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe. That is more a coffee table book and it is fun to read a section here and there. However, it does not have that much text so it is more of picture book suitable both for odler children and adults. Of course you do not get an understanding of chemistry by reading any of these books. Still fun knowledge if you are that kind of person.

This was a rare impulse buy, one literally done after scanning a few paragraphs of text and the back matter. My intuition is rarely wrong even with such hasty decisions, and this was no exception; this is one of the best nonfiction books I've read this year. With a light and often self-deprecating tone, the author dances through periodic table, from its conception to its members, touching on history, chemistry, art, literature, with a little autobiography and even travelogue. Note that this book is not a discussion--technical or otherwise--of all of the elements; he focuses on those with a strong link to popular culture and everyday experience. Trivia-lovers will have much and more to pull out of this.

If I have only one complaint about the book, it's that it's too short; there is such a rich vein of material here that it feels just a tad rushed. Even so, this is hardly enough to wrench away a rare fifth star.

I enjoyed this book. In it, author Hugh Andersey-Williams weaves a well-written tale about the elements and how they relate to culture. I found the language somewhat more formal than that of Sam Kean’s The Disappearing Spoon. I also found that Periodic Tales could be overly philosophical. If you have the desire to read more than one book on chemistry, then these two differ enough that they are both worthwhile reading. if you are only going to read one then I recommend The Disappearing Spoon. On the other hand, Cathy Cobb’s Creations of Fire gives a better history of chemistry than either of these two books but is not as much fun to read as either of them.

Reading Mr. Aldersey-Williams' collection of periodic tales leads you to one inescapable conclusion: some elements of the periodic table are more culturally interesting than others. From the author's point of view, this may be because an element's cultural significance increases with the amount of time we've pounded, polished, or manipulated it. This theory is sensible enough; after all, the most culturally significant elements in this book are gold, iron, silver, lead, tin, and copper. Add to them the radioactive elements--those that opened a new frontier for science, a new dread for mankind--and you have a sturdy bundle of literary alloys that form the book's backbone.

Moving out from these, Mr. Aldersey-Williams goes on to fashion many more alloys you hope will be as culturally dense as the others. Many are not. In fact, some are hardly alloys at all, but merely more than stories of their discoveries. Others, examples of elements the author found in a forgotten cupboard. Still more, like those rare earth metals lingering all about the Nordic landscape, leave you appreciative for the author's excursion but questioning their relevance to his overall scheme.

If there is a scheme, that is. It can be hard to track. The result: you're not sure whether you're reading a high tech scavenger hunt, a nostalgic tale of the author's childhood, or a true cultural odyssey. Near the end, the author tries to tie all these disparate paths together with the following explanation: "My aim in this book has been to show that the elements are all around us, both in the material sense that they are in the objects we treasure under our kitchen sinks, but also around us more powerfully in a figurative sense, in our art and literature and language, in our history and geography, and that the character of these parallel lives arises ultimately from each element's universal and unvarying properties."

This quote says it all; it is witness to an author trying to do too much, or one whose curiosity got away from him. Rather than launch an excursion to all these various shores, I would have preferred if he had lashed his curiosity to the cultural anchor suggested by the title to be his mainstay. In those instances where he does, he really hits his stride, his writing a near art. Silver is the shining element in my mind. Its message is one of virginal pureness. It's one Shakespeare polished to reflect indelible foolishness. Its discovery in America (where a well-placed fire could cause it to ooze from the ground) becomes the harbinger of havoc in European currency markets. The ones referenced above are good as well, as is the surprising sodium. Many of the rest should have been left where he found them. Working your way through them will make you wish he had.

I enjoyed the book-particularly the author's account of his visit to Ytterby in Sweden. The mine there yielded the minerals from which several lanthanides were first isolated. Somewhere in my memory is the mineral monazite, but I failed to find it cited. Perhaps more timely would be a discussion of the squeeze on supply( now easing somewhat) of lanthanides elements due to Chinese hoarding.
The book is full of references to literature and even opera( Das Rheingold, the Magic Flute, Der Rosenkavalier). One minor point with regard to Das Rheingold : it is incorrect as the author states
that Siegfried's forging song occurs in this opera- Siegfried hasn't been born yet this early in the Ring cycle. The forging song occurs in the opera Siegfried. What does occur in das Rheingold
is the sound of the Nibelungs beating their hammers-presumably forging gold.

Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements by Hugh Aldersey- Williams

This book is a delight. It is informative, humorous, historic, and a page turner. You don't have to be into science to appreciate it.

According to the author, this is "a cultural history of the elements" in the periodic table. The book gives interesting information about almost all the groups of elements in the periodic table, and you may well come away from it knowing a little more about the periodic table than when you picked up the book.

However, the writing fails to engage the reader. It is neither outrageously bad nor extraordinarily good. It's simply forgettable. I had read Sam Kean's "The Disappearing Spoon," and I was expecting the same level of engaging writing from this book that I had found in Mr Kean's book, and I was disappointed. In this book, nothing stands out; nothing is memorable. Hence the three stars. It's neither very bad or very good; it's simply OK.

The study of the Periodic Table can be dull. Aldersey-Williams has changed all that in this book which tells stories about the elements namely their history, discovery and the impact they have on our culture/technology. The author has essentially breathed life into specific elements and this is a good thing as it holds our attention. You might also like Angels and Alchemists: The Origin, History and Chemistry of the Elements which takes a similar approach to understanding the elements and is packed with useful references on this subject.

I enjoyed this book considerably more than I expected to. It's essentially a collection of essays on different elements and their presence in history, literature, pop culture, and of course, science. Aldersey-Williams has an impressive breadth of knowledge, and in the best essays he makes some very clever tie-ins and call-backs that keep what would otherwise be a disparate collection of facts from falling apart. The writing is very good --clear, smart, but never so technical as to lose the average reader. This book could very well convert some otherwise reticent humanists.

The only reason I didn't give it four stars is that a few of the elements included just don't quite seem to be worth writing about. Ytterbium? As a result, the book could've been pared down a bit. Still, the ratio of boring stuff to fascinating factoids is good enough that I still recommend this book highly.

I realize there's nothing proprietary about writing about elements, but from the preview this work is clearly inferior to the work by John Emsley, who is less verbose. Check out his book Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements (2001) or some of his other works. He's really good, pithy and got a dry British sense of humor: with an element of surprise.

This book is a wonderful look at the history behind the elements in the periodic table. If you want to know who discovered them and how they found them and how they were named and numbered, this is the book for you. Great read.

Spellbound from the first page, this is a feast for a science geek. Some of the transitions could be more graceful but the history and cultural influence of the various elements was completely engaging.

If you are interested in reading about the author's personal adventures, such as melting lead with his nine year old or pictures such as those on page 14 or even how the author used to blow things up in his junior high science class then this may be the book for you. But if you would actually like to know more about the elements then you may wish to look elsewhere.

Check out the table of contents for a sample of whimsical nature of this book.