Eric Lawton reviewed The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
Review of 'The Periodic Table' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
This is a book of mixed short stories and essays. Each one is named after an element in the periodic table.
Primo Levi was a Jewish-Italian chemist who survived the concentration camps and also spent some of WWII as a chemist under precarious conditions in fascist Italy.
The pieces are a mix of true tales of his life outside the camps (he has a separate book with that story) and fictional pieces set in and out of wartime. In many of them, he teaches a little practical chemistry and a human story. He emerges as an amazing human being with an interesting attitude towards the people with various levels of involvement as his tormentors. Neither a saint-like forgiveness nor a demonization but a firm and practical assessment of how and to what extent they should be held responsible. I enjoyed the book as both a captivating page-turner and for what …
This is a book of mixed short stories and essays. Each one is named after an element in the periodic table.
Primo Levi was a Jewish-Italian chemist who survived the concentration camps and also spent some of WWII as a chemist under precarious conditions in fascist Italy.
The pieces are a mix of true tales of his life outside the camps (he has a separate book with that story) and fictional pieces set in and out of wartime. In many of them, he teaches a little practical chemistry and a human story. He emerges as an amazing human being with an interesting attitude towards the people with various levels of involvement as his tormentors. Neither a saint-like forgiveness nor a demonization but a firm and practical assessment of how and to what extent they should be held responsible. I enjoyed the book as both a captivating page-turner and for what I learned of practical science under difficult conditions (and his ongoing enthusiasm for it) and of revealing stories of humanity. The fiction rings as true as the autobiographical elements.
Just for interest, after each chapter, I read the corresponding chapter of [b:Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements|944856|Nature's Building Blocks An A-Z Guide to the Elements|John Emsley|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1347982707s/944856.jpg|929791] which is also one chapter per element but non-fiction.
