The Age of Alchemy: The Secret History of Chemistry from Ancient Magic to Modern Science

“There have been many histories of chemistry, with a focus either on the history itself or by explaining chemistry through the history of its development. But many of them start only 300 or 400 years ago, with the discovery of oxygen, or something like it. Kit Chapman starts long, long before, in the days of ancient Egypt and biblical times in the Middle East and in ancient China. So he’s delving deep. You go through half the book before you come across a modern European scientist. This point is a strong one – we felt he was doing the difficult stuff, going deeper into time, to where people were not documenting their work, not writing scientific papers.” Read more...

The Best Popular Science Books of 2026: The Royal Society Book Prize

Michael Benton, Scientist