Summary

As a child, Sam Kean was fascinated with the mercury that would fall out of the thermometers he frequently broke. Mercury came up in his classes in school and Kean was drawn to its destructive beauty. From learning about that element, he also learned history, etymology, alchemy, mythology, literature, poison forensics, and psychology. As a physic major, Kean continued to collect stories about the elements and the periodic table. This book shares those stories and peels back the layers of the periodic table to explore the history of our species and how we interact with the physical world.

Analysis

Mercury is an important element with which Kean introduces the periodic table not only because it fascinated him as a child and therefore provides the author with a narrative opening to the book, but also because it is connected to so many other fields of...