What is it made of? What is in it? We have become a society fascinated by composition, and for good reason. Calcium supplements combat bone-wasting diseases; iron alleviates anaemia. Lead in petrol shows up in the snow fields of the Antarctic; mercury poisons fish in South America. Radon from the earth poses health hazards in regions built on basaltic rocks; and natural arsenic contaminates wells in Bangladesh. There are elements that we crave, and those we do our best to avoid. Philip Ball reveals that the story of the elements is not simply a tale of a hundred or so different types of atom, each with its unique properties and idiosyncrasies, but a story about our cultural interactions with the nature and composition of matter. He shows that to understand the elements is to engage with the reasons why people have long believed the world to be an elaborate composite of fundamental materials, and how throughout history we have sought to identify those primary substances. This book explains the difficulties of defining and identifying the elements, the pattern of the periodic table, the principles behind the formation of synthetic elements, and the ways in which elements have shaped the technologies of civilizations.