Fascinating and highly accessible... Unpicking the complexities of the subject is not easy, but Johnson has done a fine job of it... [An] excellent book

Lucid and accessible... [Written with] a beguiling combination of clarity and enthusiasm

Johnson is one of the best science journalists writing today

Full of good stories and he knows how to tell them well ... an agreeable jumble of anecdote, reflection and information

Great fun to read and an endless fund of unlikely and improbable anecdotes ... sharp and often witty

A joyous romp through the chemical elements

Not only a cultural history of the elements, it is also a lament to the loss of science as a hobby

A flashily brainy book, crammed with literary references and held together by a personal quest to collect as many elements as possible

'Elements are fun' is the essential premise of Hugh Aldersey-Williams's new book and by heck he's right ... Aldersey-Williams mourns the fact chemistry isn't really sexy any more; Periodic Tales is a step towards it getting its mojo back

Imaginative and fun ... almost every page yields a nugget