Four Elements: Water, Air, Fire, Earth

There are now nearly 120 elements known, and these don't include water, air, fire or earth. But these original four still hold an important place in the history of science. Rebecca Rupp's book Four Elements uses them as the inspiration for a collection of essays, looking at science, history and a great deal more besides. Sometimes the connection is fairly straightforward, for instance ocean currents, geology and weather link directly to water, earth and air. For other subjects the path is more indirect, for instance air links to air-bourne molecules and so to perfumes and on to the measures taken in biblical times to keep secret the location of frankincense trees.

I did wonder whether a different layout might have been better. At the start chapters of up to 80 pages are somewhat intimidating - really it is best to consider each essay of about 3 pages as standing alone. They're the sort of articles of which you might get one each week in a magazine. But then I would think that alternating between the elements would be better than dealing with each separately. Anyway, if you can decide on a suitable way of reading these essays then you'll find that they're packed full of information (although not particularly useful information), and highly entertaining.