The Periodic Table by Primo Levi is an impassioned response to the Holocaust: Consisting of 21 short stories each possessing the name of a chemical element the collection tells of the author's experiences as a Jewish-Italian chemist before during and after Auschwitz in luminous clear and unfailingly beautiful prose. It has been named the best science book ever by the Royal Institution of Great Britain and is considered to be Levi's crowning achievement.