The Episodic Table of Elements

So much ink has been spilled over the chemical elements that it’s difficult to approach the subject from a unique vantage point. Anja Røyne has pulled this off, though, in her book The Elements We Live By. She uses chemistry as the lens through which she explores the complete history of life on Earth. In essence, she’s telling the story of every thing through all of time.

Røyne starts at the beginning — the very beginning, from the Big Bang, compressing the events of the universe down to a single week. The universe is born on Monday, for instance, our solar system coagulates on Friday, et cetera. After astronomy, she adjusts her position to observe geology, technology, biology, industry, and agriculture, before wrapping things up with a look toward humanity’s precarious future.

It’s a clever framework, sort of a Rashomon for chemistry, and it provides plenty of opportunities for Røyne to tell stories that this writer has not seen anywhere else — for instance, Hitler occupying Norway and Denmark in order to secure critical supplies of iron.

Røyne doesn’t just write about the elements’ pasts and the way they’re used in the present, but throughout the book, outlines what each element’s future might look like. It’s a step beyond what most books about the elements do, but in hindsight, it’s an obvious inclusion.

I know this counts for very little, but the hardcover version of the book is bound with a highly pleasing soft-touch material.

I tip my hat to Røyne for finding a niche no one else had claimed before. She writes in a casual style that’s very easy to understand. It reminded me more than a bit of Hugh Aldersey-Williams’ Periodic Tales, although that book is far more personal.

Ultimately, this book provides new and interesting information without retreading well-worn ground. I’ll certainly be using it as a source for my further research, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys this podcast.

Buy The Elements We Live By by Anja Røyne:

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For a graphic as colorful and informative as the periodic table, many books on the subject are quite drab. That makes Tom Jackson’s book, The Periodic Table: A Visual Guide To The Elements all the more striking when you flip through its colorful pages. A lot is packed into this slim tome, which takes a holistic approach to the most famous graphic in all science.

The book does dedicate a page or two to each element, but not before outlining each group as a unit and discussing several concepts critical to learning chemistry. That’s actually my favorite part of the book. From the size of an atom to radioactivity to reactivity, The Periodic Table devotes space to topics that are often given little deliberate attention.

That said, Jackson does an admirable job describing the elements individually, too, often sharing facts that rarely appear in other popular sources. It necessarily can’t go in-depth on any of these subjects, but what it lacks in depth the book makes up for in breadth.

Every page of the book is accompanied by flat, vibrant illustrations peppered with occasional black-and-white photographs. It is a joyful approach to the subject, and it often feels more like reading a magazine than a textbook — even as it explains concepts like “bulging anions” and “accumulated action.”

And it is a spectacular tool for learning. While the podcast is a great medium for communicating the stories of chemistry, it’s difficult to explain complicated chemical concepts via an audio-only format. This is precisely where Jackson succeeds, using these bright illustrations to teach complicated ideas in a way that makes them seem simple.

I’ve acquired a fair number of books about chemistry, at this point. While I manage to find all of them useful in some way or another, some of them are not exactly enjoyable. The Periodic Table manages to succeed on both fronts, and makes a great addition for the library of anyone with so much as a passing interest in science.

Buy The Periodic Table: A Visual Guide To The Elements by Tom Jackson:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound