The Periodic Kingdom: A Journey Into the Land of the Chemical Elements

As a physicist, I have always felt I understood the basic concepts of atomic structure, the Bohr atom through the Dirac treatment of relativistic electrons and that was enough about chemistry that I needed to know. Of course, that was a very shortsighted point of view and did nothing for a practical understanding of how the elements interact. This book gives a wonderful introduction to just that topic. It starts off with an overview of how the basic properties of the elements vary, in a systematic way, across the periodic table. The books metaphor of a new land, makes it amazingly easy to remember these properties. Nothing else I've read has been as successful as conveying this. I would buy this book for the first four chapters alone. There are, of course, some problems with the book. For one, the author seems to have gotten a "new word a day" calendar and seems to feel the need to use them. ("Complexity can effloresce from subtly different consanguinity.") But fortunately, these are few and far between. Could a non-technical person read and enjoy this book? I have no idea but I would recommend they try.

This work covers the fine nuances of the Periodic Table ofelements from the East or p-block to the West s-block.It describes how classic metals evolved. For instance, theuse of Cu. came out of the Stone Age. Iron, cobalt,manganese and other metals were utilized to shape steel.Dolomite is found in Italy and titanium in the West Desert.This book would be very helpful in understanding how thevarious metals and non-metals evolved. In addition, the permanentposition on the Table of Elements is explained.

The previous reviewers split between two camps - those who think this book is oversimplified and those who like the book.The main point is that this is NOT an academic text book, so that somebody who studies chemistry academically wouldnt benefit much from it, but rather a popular science book, intended to present complicated material that should be accessable to everybody in a way understandable to the average Joe.That the explanations are simplified is the only solution, considering that the average Joe didnt study quantum mechanics.The book is not big, but it's supposed to be fun and easy to read, and it's price tag isnt big either.I like this book a lot - it presents the material in a readable and enjoyable way, making this basic science (and shouldnt everybody understand basic chemistry ?) accessable to everybody.Though I studied chemistry in high-school and a bit of inorganic chemistry in university, I enjoyed the way the presentation and got another angle on the subject.

This book ingeniously explains the fundamental, though often hard to understand, concepts of chemistry, and is very easy to read. It explains the periodic table as a map to a fascinating land: The kingdom of the elements.

As a pharmacist, I've taken years of advanced chemistry courses. I wish that I'd had this book (The Periodic Kingdom) available during pharmacy school- it would have helped to elucidate some of the most fundamental, yet hard-to-grasp concepts in chemistry. Right now, I'm using Professor Atkins' insightful illumination of the atomic world to help explain these concepts to my 6th-grade son. It beats the dry 6th-grade text any day. I can't praise this book enough.