book reviews rather than around a diverse set of practical is also well known. I would have liked to have lessons borne from experience, the authors seen more in this chapter. Oxygen is too have limited this book’s contribution to an pivotal an element to be treated lightly and alternative view of how decision-makers needs to have been addressed from a modern might confront complex and contested viewpoint. It is the only element, apart from BETTMANN/CORBIS environmental and science policies. I fluorine, that can react with so many others. Roger Pielke Jr is at the Center for Science and Unlike fluorine, however, it is not so reactive Technology Policy Research, University of as to become exotic, and it is more flexible Colorado/Cooperative Institute for Research in than fluorine in the kinds of bonds it forms. Environmental Sciences, Boulder, Oxygen can, in effect, feel the pulse of the rest Colorado 80309, USA. of the elements quite accurately, and it does this in increasingly subtle ways, such as by participating in hydrogen bonds. The organization of the elements into the periodic table is treated competently, as is Mind the synthesis of new elements in the ‘atom factories’ in Berkeley and Dubna, and these over matter? chapters contain a lot of information. Ball’s The Ingredients: A Guided Tour description of isotopes is particularly good, of the Elements and I do not believe that I have seen such by Philip Ball an imaginative handling of this usually Oxford University Press: 2002. 228 pp. £13.99 Golden touch: the tale of King Midas highlights stodgy topic. His breezy journey through the Gautam R. Desiraju the allure of gold for human societies. landscape of some technologically impor- tant elements (iron, silicon, palladium, the Another book on the chemical elements? It is number and a prime location in the middle lanthanides and the noble gases) provides daunting to write about such a familiar topic of the periodic table. These attributes lead a lively end to the guided tour. but Philip Ball has the credentials to do so. A readily to covalency, which in turn favours It is in the second of his stratagems that consultant editor for Nature, he has written specificity and reversibility in the reactions Ball becomes more controversial. When he extensively about science in addition to in which the corresponding molecules can states that “the story of the elements is not broadcasting on television and radio. participate. Carbon, cerium and californium simply a tale of a hundred or so different The main hurdle to writing about the ele- are not equal partners, and Ball has done types of atoms… it is a story about our cul- ments is that chemistry is all about molecules well in not treating them in the same way. tural interactions with the nature and com- and not elements, just as a song is about The elements that the author has chosen position of matter”, he moves beyond what is tunes and not notes and a sentence is about to highlight are excellent selections. Gold strictly scientific towards a looser and softer words and not letters. There are those who and oxygen would have been my choices, mode of thought. The holistic approach of feel that even molecules do not provide a too. Gold has always fascinated humans and Aristotle led to the quartet of earth, fire, air full understanding of chemistry, and that will always continue to do so. Ball’s account and water. Add a fifth — ether — and we molecular assemblies, rather than individual of this “most useless of metals” is arresting obtain the ‘panchabhoota’, or five elements, molecules, are the irreducible leitmotivs of as it brings together alchemy, chemistry, of the Hindu canon; the Absolute is wor- function in both materials science and biolo- physics, metallurgy, a little biology, history, shipped in these manifestations to this day. gy. In such a scenario, the 120 or so chemical geography, economics, sociology and cul- Ball refers to Plato, Galen, Leonardo, elements belong more to physics than to ture, in what is truly the best chapter of the Shakespeare and T. S. Eliot to illustrate that chemistry and, in their austerity, remind book. The author reiterates that it is metals, these holistic concepts have satisfied human- us of a time when chemistry was closer to rather than any of the other elements, that kind’s needs over time. But it is an absolute atomic physics than to functional biology. have so definitively encouraged or limited fact that these interpretations are scientifically So are the elements relevant today? Ball the scope of human activity. Coinage metals wrong, just as Dmitry Mendeleyev, Lothar has deflected this question in two ways in this fascinated man long ago, then in the twenti- Meyer and the scientists who preceded them provocative book, which is surely worth a eth century the focus shifted to metals such for a hundred or so years were scientifically read by both general readers and chemists. as chromium, tungsten and the platinum correct about the nature of the elements. The He has been quite subjective in his choice of group. Today, geopolitical strategy is driven periodic table is one of the grandest intellec- elements, and the book is clearly a ‘guided’ by the availability or accessibility of titani- tual accomplishments of the scientific world, tour. Secondly, he has taken poetic licence in um, zirconium and thorium. Clearly, nature and in trying to make the story of the defining the term ‘element’. has bestowed her favours unequally in her elements more inclusive by interpreting a The first of these two approaches cannot distribution of the metallic elements, and we scientific subject from the viewpoint of the be questioned. So much has been written can expect that humans will continue to be humanities, Ball is treading on unexplored about the elements that a new book need not as unprincipled, as ruthless and in the end as and possibly treacherous ground. Conversely, be just descriptive or comprehensive. To a silly as they always have been in their quest critics of physics and chemistry maintain physicist, the formation of any of the known to gain access and control of metals. that all of the important problems in these elements is merely a reaffirmation of the rules But if gold is the sovereign of the periodic subjects are essentially solved. Is this book of quantum mechanics. Yet the distribution of table, oxygen is surely the prime minister. then an implicit recognition of this fact? I the 92 elements found naturally on the surface Ball’s account of this element is mostly his- Gautam R. Desiraju is in the School of Chemistry, of our planet is quite skewed. No more than torical, however, and much of what he says University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad 500 046, 30 are of widespread occurrence in the min- about the scientific interactions or otherwise India. eral world. The entry of an element into the between Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestley ‘biological club’ is even more stringent, being and Carl Scheele, for example, has been Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molec- largely restricted to around six members of described elsewhere. The role of oxygen in ules (Oxford University Press, £7.99), also by moderate temperament that have low atomic maintaining the various biochemical cycles Philip Ball, is now published in paperback. 434 © 2002 Nature Publishing Group NATURE | VOL 419 | 3 OCTOBER 2002 | www.nature.com/nature.