An informative and funny scientific book all about the periodic table and how it has affected our lives. Shows why Gandhi hated iodine, why the Japanese killed Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium, how lithium helped cure poet Robert Lowell of his madness and how gallium is the go-to element for laboratory pranksters. 'Kean has Bill Bryson's comic touch...a lively history of the elements and the characters behind their discovery' "New Scientist"