The Ingredients: A guided tour of the elements by Philip Ball, Oxford University Press, £13.99, ISBN 0192841009 Reviewed by Roy Herbert
A DELIGHT of a book with a modest title that gives small hint of its merits. Elegantly written, it is about the long search to find out what the Earth and the life it supports are made of, a fascinating tale. The Ingredients: A guided tour of the elements could have been a plodding expedition following the tracks of Dmitry Mendeleyev and his periodic table, informative but eyelid-weighting. Instead it’s far-reaching, entertaining and salted with anecdote, such as the…
