Rating: 
Summary: Disturbing and Trivial
Review: I happened to read this book shortly after reading a book about a character struggling to come to terms with his wife's suicide (from depression) - 'The Dogs of Babel'. And that made me wonder about the signs the character had missed in his wife's decline that lead to her suicide. Should he have seen them? Did the writer plot them into the story in a meaningful way? Did I miss them? So I got off to a bad start with 'The Periodic Table' when I read that Promo Levi ended his life in suicide. Should I try and see the indicators in this novel that were pointing to that - as it turned out - inevitability? What a task to put on oneself! Much of 'The Periodic Table' is entertaining in the quirky way of modern fiction; quirky and annoying for me. Even trivial. It may be interesting to learn a bit about a chemist's occupation, especially a chemist of the past, but this does seem to be an artifice to carry the novel - unless it carries some deeper allegory. And allegory is important for me here. I have a story to tell myself but I will not tell it the way survivors of Auschwitz keep telling theirs. I need an allegory and I have yet to find a satisfactory one. I don't doubt that we did need stories of Auschwitz to inform the world - stories from survivors, stories from workers in the camps, stories from the liberators, even imagined stories from those who did not survive. But 'The Periodic Table' was written in 1975 by an author who had already written of his experiences. It seems to me that this is too late to keep telling the stories - it is time for allegories. 'What happened to me is described elsewhere (p122)' is an annoying quote for me. I also take issue at comments like 'so this is what it meant to be different: this was the price for being the salt of the earth (p104)'. I don't doubt that Jewishness does carry a weight that imposes especially on young people. And Jews like Levi experienced terrible times. But then so did Gypsies, so do people in today's times in many places all over the world. For me everyone is 'different' and has to accomodate their own special differentness and cope with the constraints it imposes on them. Finally, I return to the matter of Levi's suicide (and you can probably guess that the whole notion of suicide is anathema to me, inconceivable - but perhaps I am lucky in that). There is no doubt that the best chapter for me in this book was the second last one in which Auschwitz does impose on the time of Levi's writing in an entirely justifiable way. I leave it to the reader of this review to decide for themselves when they read the chapter if they can see any pointers to the author's suicide. Other recommendations:
Schubert's song cycle 'Die Winterreise'
Rating: 
Summary: Unbelievable
Review: I read a review of this book in a chemical engineering magazine I subscribe to. After reading the review, I purchased the book and finished in about 2 days. After finishing this book, I went and purchased the other books written by this fascinating man. I have an interest in the Holocaust due to a degree in history, however Primo puts a "humananistic" touch on the experience. His books are thought provoking and enjoyable reads. I highly recommend all of his books-BUT Begin with this one as it puts the others in context of this peron's life and experience.
Rating:
Summary: Sensational!!! Deserves 10 stars
Review: I read this book for the first time about five years ago, but since then I've read it many times (and as a matter of fact, all Primo Levi's books). The special thing about THE PERIODIC TABLE is that brings the joy of life ans science, and also of lecture, to everyone who reads it. I know this is the greatest book ever written: it's simplicity deserves every acclamation.
Rating:
Summary: Strangely inspiring
Review: I started this book expecting a story of how a Jew survived the Holocaust in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. I thought that I'd read about tragedy and misfortune, but I didn't get what I expected. What I got was a tale of subtle defiance and quiet resiliency to the war that looms in the background of the book. The author hints at the drama and struggle of the war through his many short vignettes--each related to an element from the Periodic Table--but he is never overcome by it, remaining distant from the events, submitting helplessly to the way things were, but looking brightly toward the future. This was altogether a very interesting book. Strangely inspiring, aloof but aware, it provided me a view of the second world war that I never would have imagined.
Rating:
Summary: Strangely inspiring
Review: I started this book expecting a story of how a Jew survived the Holocaust in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. I thought that I'd read about tragedy and misfortune, but I didn't get what I expected. What I got was a tale of subtle defiance and quiet resiliency to the war that looms in the background of the book. The author hints at the drama and struggle of the war through his many short vignettes--each related to an element from the Periodic Table--but he is never overcome by it, remaining distant from the events, submitting helplessly to the way things were, but looking brightly toward the future. This was altogether a very interesting book. Strangely inspiring, aloof but aware, it provided me a view of the second world war that I never would have imagined.
Rating:
Summary: The best book I ever read.
Review: I was a once a chemistry student, so I particularly liked this book. You will, too. The language and imagery are beautiful, the humour and pathos remarkable, the translation magnificent. Levi is lost to us, but he left this book. Read it
Rating:
Summary: The Periodic Table
Review: In the third to last chapter of The Periodic Table, the narrator - Levi - goes to his 25th University Anniversary. He meets a colleague of his, one that he did not know too well during university, and they swap stories on chemistry, a passion and an occupation both dear to their hearts and the thorn in their side. Levi informs the man of the latest book he is writing, a small book, one that, he hopes, will convey the quiet satisfaction he derives from chemistry, because it 'did not seem fair to me that the world should know everything about how the doctor, prostitute, sailor, assassin, countess, Ancient Roman, conspirator and Polynesian lives and nothing about how we transformers of matter live.'
That sentence sums up very well the thrust of the novel. Split into chapters named after a different element of the Periodic Table, Levi takes us on a journey through his life, from boyhood to adulthood, the primary preoccupation of which being chemistry. There is a very large section that he glosses over - the trauma he experienced in a Nazi concentration camp - and this is because he has, in his own words, more than adequately dealt with that subject matter previously. No, this book is not an upraised fist at Nazi Germany, but it does not shy away from the topic, either. First and foremost, it is a series of essays on chemistry. Not the grandiose, world-changing chemistry, but the small achievements, the humble failures, the baffling oddities.
First, is Argon. Argon is an inert gas, resistant to change. Just like his family, Levi muses, rapidly jumping back a century and recounting his extended family history from there, with liberal doses of Jewish linguistics and customs thrown in for good measure. Now, acquainted as to the sort of man Levi is, we wander through his college years, each chapter focusing both on his growth as a chemist and a person, but also on the element for which it is named. Interspersed throughout are a few, largely unrelated short stories that deal with a specific element in an interesting way, the story of lead being a particular highlight. These are stories that he composed as a young man, polished and presented in an easily consumed fashion in this, his endstone book.
The second last chapter briefly touches on Levi's World War II experience. Through a 'typical' chemistry story involving Vanadium, he engages in correspondence with a man who is later revealed to have been one of the many German officers in Bruno, where Levi was incarcerated. This story is sad, and for me was the most powerful of the fifteen or so on offer. Levi is frightened at the idea of meeting this man again - not because the German was specifically cruel, but because it brings back a life since over. The German, Dr Muller, is anxious to be forgiven, trying to 'settle his accounts with the past and they didn't tally'. For Muller, this meeting might even the score, for Levi, it could never. This chapter is one of the shortest, but carries with it the full weight of experience, sadness, and forgotten terror.
For the most part, however, the novel is not depressing or bleak. Rather, it shows the small joys allowed to a chemist who truly loves his occupation. Chemistry puzzles are solved, there are adventures involving chicken excrement and lipstick - don't ask - and throughout, there is a sense that chemistry can be fun, can be enjoyable, can be exciting. No, it is enjoyable, fun and exciting, but only for certain people. And for these people - Levi obviously included - it is a passion, a friend, a lover, and he wishes to share this joy with us, the sadly ignorant reader. I thank him for that.
Rating:
Summary: Science for Humanity
Review: Levi is one of my heroes - a scientist who overcame a horrific life experience (the Holocaust camp experience), losing friends and relatives yet did not become bitter or carry his anger for ages. The writer is the face of Western humanism and his Jewish Italian roots seem to make him almost humble in tone. The idea of naming each chapter after an element then creating a life story around it is exactly the kind of writing to which I and apparently many others are drawn. Besides dispensing scientific facts along the way, Levi teaches us the meaning of life and living and even humor. One of the best and most approachable "science" books around.
Rating:
Summary: Levi survives Auschwitz through chemistry
Review: Levi weaves the characteristics of the chemical elements through his life both metaphorically and literally. The author's boyhood fascination with chemistry leads to his adult occupation. During World War II, the young Italian Jew is taken away by the Nazis to Auschwitz. Ironically, his chemical knowledge keeps him alive at the death camp. This true story has a mystery in it; wherein Levi's German supervisor at Auschwitz Buna synthetic rubber, slave labor factory contacts him many years later [not long after writing this book, Levi suffered a fate similar to the German]. The book is refreshingly unsentimental, gripping, and even educational from both historical and scientific perspectives. Reading it is all at once stimulating, frightening, and enlightening. Readers will enjoy and also be improved by Levi's book.
Rating:
Summary: highly recommended
Review: Like many people, I have a prejudice against translations, believing that they cannot match the language of the original. However, with Primo Levi as with Jorge Luis Borges, the beauty of the translation of The Periodic Table is such that I want learn Italian (as I wanted to learn Spanish) just so that I can reread this book in its original language to appreciate it all the more. The tales are magical and practical at the same time, with, to paraphrase the cover, not a single wasted word, and they betray the author's keen eye for the myriad interesting things about the everyday lives of the people around him.
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