With the moral stamina and intellectual pose of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, duitful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose. He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most contempible. What has survived in Levi’s writing isn’t just his memory of the unbearable, but also, in THE PERIODIC TABLE and THE WRENCH, his delight in what made the world exquisite to him. He was himself a magically endearing man, the most delicately forceful enchanter I’ve ever known – PHILIP ROTHThe Hachette Essentials series comprises a collection of titles that are regarded as modern classics. A carefully and lovingly curated selection of distinctive, ground-breaking fiction and non-fiction titles published since 1950.  Timeless. Relevant. Passionate. Unified as a series - distinctive as books.  A good book is great. A great book is essential.