Periodic Tales Audiobook By Hugh Aldersey-Williams cover art

Periodic Tales

The Curious Lives of the Elements

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Periodic Tales

By: Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Narrated by: John Sackville
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About this listen

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Periodic Tales by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, read by John Sackville.

Everything in the universe is made of them, including you.

Like you, the elements have personalities, attitudes, talents, shortcomings, stories rich with meaning.

Here you'll meet iron that rains from the heavens and noble gases that light the way to vice. You'll learn how lead can tell your future while zinc may one day line your coffin. You'll discover what connects the bones in your body with the Whitehouse in Washington, the glow of a streetlamp with the salt on your dinner table.

Unlocking their astonishing secrets and colourful pasts, Periodic Tales is a voyage of wonder and discovery, showing that their stories are our stories, and their lives are inextricable from our own.

©2018 Hugh Aldersey-Williams (P)2018 Penguin Audio Physics Science
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Critic reviews

"Science writing at its best. A fascinating and beautiful literary anthology, bringing them to life as personalities. If only chemistry had been like this at school. A rich compilation of delicious tales." (Matt Ridley, Prospect)

"A love letter to the chemical elements. Aldersey-Williams is full of good stories and he knows how to tell them well." (Sunday Telegraph)

"Great fun to read and an endless fund of unlikely and improbable anecdotes." (Financial Times)

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Trite

Sub A-level amounts of information, inane rambling. Perhaps this is for you if you are a self absorbed English student paying too much to unlearn anything useful.

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