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The Periodic Table

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The Periodic Table

By: Primo Levi
Narrated by: Neville Jason
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About this listen

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi is an impassioned response to the Holocaust: Consisting of 21 short stories, each possessing the name of a chemical element, the collection tells of the author's experiences as a Jewish-Italian chemist before, during, and after Auschwitz in luminous, clear, and unfailingly beautiful prose. It has been named the best science book ever by the Royal Institution of Great Britain and is considered to be Levi's crowning achievement.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©1898 1975, 1982, 1994 & 2014 Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino; Translation © Schocken Books, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC (P)2015 Naxos AudioBooks Essays Nonfiction

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All stars
Most relevant
This book was described to me as a popular science book, but this is wildly inaccurate, it's the memoir of a chemist with stories linked to individual elements of the periodic table.

As someone who never reads biographies autobiographies and memoirs I was initially disappointed and nearly gave up, but I'm glad I didn't as the book gets better and better and ends with a chapter that is one of the finest things I've ever read.

There's bits of the book that are a bit odd, it gets off to a rather weak start and is somewhat disjointed, as each chapter is really a short story and often unrelated to the previous one.

Even if you can't get into the book as a whole, read the last chapter - carbon - it is superb.

Odd but compelling and what a final chapter

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Slowly gripping. great for long commute. 'short stories') most autobiographical cleverly related to PT (elements).

slowly gripping. great for long commute.

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I loved everything about this book, from the beautiful diction and story telling, to the excellent narration. Perfect.

beautiful book

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A fascinating series of books bringing together the order required for any analytical chemist in the midst of fascist Italy whilst detailing the life a an Italian Jew growing up in this era , eventually precipitated into the horrors of the Holocaust. Survival and life after these horrors enmeshed with his life as an analytical chemist in post war Europe . A story of a man who never lost the wonder of chemistry and scientific analyses, which he used to describe the world around him. A must for any student of chemistry and life.

Primo Levy Chemist and Man Extraordinaire

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The elements of this collection are separate but overlap and combine in ways which are fascinating and at time deeply moving.

Worth it for the last story alone. Carbon can be read in isolation but has much more impact after all the others.

Excellent collection

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