What I Read This Weekend
The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi
As one of the leading voices in sharing the horrors of World War II, Primo Levi is best known for his harrowing autobiography If This Is a Man. Yet, it is another one of his works that particularly resonates today. Though structured as a collection of stories, The Periodic Table charts the formative journey of Mr. Levi’s mind and character. It also happens to be regarded as one of the — if not the — best science books ever written, named the greatest science book of all time by the Royal Institution of Great Britain and widely praised by The New York Times and The Guardian, among others.
Yet, The Periodic Table is neither a pure autobiography, nor a strictly scientific work. Rather, it blends both, giving us a very rich and lyrical account of curiosity, precision and human dignity in the face of brutality and moral collapse. To a large degree, in this work Mr. Levi shows us how a man strives to remain whole in a world that is dissolving around him, and what it means to endure in a world where truth has become provisional. Each chapter is named after an element of the periodic table, and the contents of each stand on their own. Together, however, they trace a larger moral arc. In the end, we are left with the conclusion that science is a form of ethical precision, which allows us to name things accurately even as what surrounds us degrades. Or as Mr. Levi suggests, to understand matter is to understand ourselves and in that understanding lies meaning’s last refuge.
As we continue to navigate a time of flux, where what holds true one day may not be as accurate the following day (or even an hour later), The Periodic Table teaches us that in corrosive times, the work of naming, testing, refining, and remembering is not just scientific. Not just chemistry. It is character and compunction. It is the essence of survival.