Descriptions, Reviews, etc.
Description:
For readers of Sam Kean and Bill Bryson, The Age of Alchemy uncovers a vibrant, interconnected world of forgotten artisans, scholars, and experimenters who, across millennia and continents, transformed mystical alchemy into modern chemistry.
"Timely and essential, this is great storytelling."--Hugh Aldersey-Williams, bestselling author of Periodic Tales 3,000 years ago, on the banks of the Tigris in what is now known as Iraq, a woman perfumer named Tappūtī mastered the control of temperature and the arts of distillation, calcination, condensation, filtering, purification, fixation, and sublimation, unknowingly staking her claim as the first chemist in history.
From Egyptian tombs and the dazzling workshops of Alexandria to Chinese emperors seeking immortality,
The Age of Alchemy uncovers the hidden roots of alchemy and its transformation into chemistry. Kit Chapman brings to life forgotten innovators--women alchemists, artisan experimenters, and ingenious fraudsters--while challenging Eurocentric myths and celebrating the diverse cultures that forged our understanding of matter.
Blending vivid storytelling, forgotten history, and fascinating science, the book explores the meaning and impact of chemical knowledge--its power to heal, to harm, and to transform societies. It explores how alchemists inspired modern medicine, how the search for immortality led to both lethal elixirs and life-saving antimalarials, how pigments and alloys reshaped economies and empires, and how the old dream of transmuting metals was finally realized in nuclear physics.
The Age of Alchemy invites readers to see chemistry not as a dry catalogue of formulas, but as a four-thousand-year human drama of curiosity, ambition, ingenuity, and resilience--a global story of how we learned to understand and manipulate the material world.
Review Quotes:
"This enjoyable, informative book by a science journalist and historian convincingly argues that chemistry evolved from alchemy, which humans began practicing in the Stone Age.... A delightful, rigorous, and compelling history also offering an exciting new model for writing the history of science."
--Kirkus Reviews
"A fascinating account of the history of alchemy and how it eventually morphed into the science of chemistry. Very well written and very readable--make sure you read the pithy and entertaining footnotes! A copy of this book should be on every chemist's bookshelf."
--Penny Le Couteur, author of Napoleon's Buttons "At last alchemy has an entertaining and accessible introduction to match the colourful lives of its practitioners. With Kit Chapman as our guide, we discover the global reach of the alchemists and come to a new appreciation of the work that laid the foundations for modern chemistry. Timely and essential, this is great storytelling."
--Hugh Aldersey-Williams, bestselling author of Periodic Tales "This is my favourite sort of book, one that effortlessly blends science, global history, travel and human stories to fascinate and delight. Chapman is an expert storyteller who takes us through time and space to unravel the mysteries of the past."
--Roma Agrawal, author of Nuts and Bolts
