By Marcus Chown
Oxford University Press, 2001
240 pages, ISBN 0-19-514305-1

This popular science book is very readable and fascinating for anyone with an interest in chemistry, astronomy, and the origins of the elements. The story weaves together the history of atomic theory, spectroscopy, radioactivity, and astrophysics to build a compelling tale that is hard to put down. Either the whole book or selected chapters would make a great supplemental text for a general chemistry or inorganic chemistry course, particularly if one wished to go into nucleosynthesis in more depth than most textbooks cover.