About this title: THE PERIODIC TABLE is the autobiography of Primo Levi, the Italian writer-chemist who is the author of SURVIVAL IN AUSCHWITZ. Levi here records his recollections of childhood and youth in northern Italy during the 1930s, at just the time that Fascism was beginning to cast its shadow across Europe.
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Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Schocken
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780805210415ISBN:0805210415
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Schocken Books
Date Published: 1986-03-12
ISBN-13:9780805208115ISBN:0805208119
Description: Very Good. Pages are clean, crisp and unmarked. Covers show light edge wear.; 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! Free Delivery Confirmation! Ships same or next business day! read more
Description: Good. 1986-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Schocken Books
Date Published: 1986
ISBN-13:9780805208115ISBN:0805208119
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. A couple of marks in the text, but only on the first couple pages. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: VG+ Used, Like New in VG+ jacket. SOFT COVER, VG+/VG+, Schocken Books, 1986, 0.9 in. H x 8.2 in. L x 5.4 in. W, 10.8 oz. This copy has very minimal signs of use, appears to have been very lightly read, has a name, inscription, stamp or some other indications of previous ownership, is in Excellent Condition Overall. Special Notes on this book: light crease on top front corner Note: expect tanning of any paperback more than a few years old, regardless of condition. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Schocken Books
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780805210415ISBN:0805210415
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. clean text, tight binding, minor shelf wear to cover/corners, sticker on back cover/spine, nice reading copy, help support independent booksellers! Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 240 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"The most striking element of the novel was the verbal prowess displayed by the author. I know this is a novel in translation, but the limits to which the English language was stretched, not only in vocabulary but syntax, metaphor and punctuation absolutely floored me. Each sentence was thick with meaning. The tone betrayed the author's primary occupation of chemist. The account of events, while by de facto emotionally charged, was written in a precise, factual manner. Also, every word had a mercilessly precise meaning which then explains the variety of words employed. Even when the author was not reporting facts from his life but fictional tales he still did so in the realistic manner, never lapsing into irrelevant poetry. For this style alone the book is an enjoyable read. However, its plot was also worth the literary trip. I always enjoy when an author helps us to visit his small corner of the world, usually an unexamined backwater, but still bursting with character and life. The details of The Periodic Table were selected with care and precision; the author distilled his homeland down to the perfect solution of details so that the reader was able to see the outline of Turin and the Piedmonts with leeway left for his imagination to take flight. I also appreciate the candor with which he talked about the reality of Italian Fascism. He did not skew the details with distance and turn Fascism into the looming cloud of evil as we know it today. Instead he treats it as it was - a fact of daily life just like the price of milk and petrol. He has helped his readers to understand how Fascism could exist in a rational world for so long. Overall, I found The Periodic Table to be a clear cut book written through the eye of a prism: the clear white shaft or reason directed the narrative style with beautiful refracted colorful details added to the life of the story."
"I was really engaging with this, and then he started in on rabbits as brainless etc.
That sounds sooo English: the whimsy when the world's at stake. The argument/rationalising is that to so badly mess the detail is to throw doubt on the overall perception.
I think this is certainly one of those cases where this is so patently inappropriate."
"Primo Levi takes twenty one chemical elements and uses each as the starting point for an essay, a story, a snippet of autobiography. Although each piece is necessarily separate, and all can be read in isolation, they combine to make a complete whole. Levi is one of the rare writers who can make you feel as though they are speaking to you personally, and he leaves a little of himself in your soul long after you have closed the book."
"Primo Levi was a chemist. He was also a Jewish Italian from the Piedmont region near Turin. He was a Holocaust survior, one of the few to return from Auschwitz. Though he wrote much elsewhere of his experience in Auschwitz and of his journey home, 'The Periodic Table' takes a larger view of his life and the matter of life generally. To the extent it is self-referential, it is a work of autobiography in a narrow, conventional sense. But Levi's writing of his life exposes elements of our shared human condition. The trope of the title is the most visible evidence of the common biographical depth of Levi's writing. What he does with the trope extends his story - like the story of 'Mother Matter' - to us all. Levi said himself that his intent was not autobiographical, but he rightly noted that any creative work inevitably is autobiographical in nature. We are all gods in that sense, through what we say and do creating the accounts of our lives, never in isolation since the language we use, as the matter of which we're made, is a precondition of our accounts. Levi said that 'The Periodic Table' took shape as an effort to write about the life and profession of chemists. What resulted was much more: a carefully crafted set of exercises in sense-making of self, ourselves, humanity, and Mother Matter. Levi published 'The Periodic Table' in 1975 in Italian, some dozen years before his death and some 30 years after his return from Auschwitz. Levi's death was ruled a suicide at the time though others have since questioned that conclusion. Elie Wiesel, a fellow survivor, said of Levi that he had died in Auschwitz. That insight makes of 'The Periodic Table' a first-person account of life after death to which Levi ties the reader through the order, action, and reaction of the elements thus arrayed: argon, hydrogen, zinc, iron, potassium, nickel, lead, mercury, phosphorus, gold, cerium, chromium, sulfur, titanium, arsenic, nitrogen, tin, uranium, silver, vanadium, and at the end an atom of carbon, in character the dust of which we're made."
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