Book Reading Update

I started reading Periodic Tales as my fifth book but it has not engaged me in a way that I feel drawn to new things I might learn.  The book sounds well-researched but it is written in a way that stories and little tidbits seem to flow without organization. I find myself coming to an anecdote that would turn out to be only 4-5 sentences long keeping me hanging.  I was looking for a more organized description of the history, discovery properties, and uses of each element.  But, rather, the book is truly an account (a bit disjointed at that) of the cultural histories of the elements, how they have been used in literature and art, stories, politics, and yes, in the actual history of the world.  Maybe, the book lively history has left me still hungry for details and so back to some searching.

I read the bibliography of the same book and came up with the following potential reading candidates:

“Gordin, Michael D., A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table (New York: Basic, 2004)”

“Brock, William H., The Fontana History of Chemistry (London: Fontana, 1992)”

“Emsley, John, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A–Z Guide to the Elements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)”

“Greenberg, Arthur, The Art of Chemistry (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003)”

“Scerri, Eric R., The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)”

“Strathern, Paul, Mendeleyev’s Dream: The Quest for the Elements (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2000)”

“Trifonov, D. N., and V. D. Trifonov, Chemical Elements: How They Were Discovered (Moscow: Mir, 1982”