An around-the-world journey to discover where in the wild we can find the elements of life and the surprising ways they’re essential to our survival.

We all know that we depend on elements for survival—from the oxygen in the air we breathe to the carbon that forms part of the structure of all living things. But how many of us appreciate the ways our bodies also depend on phosphorous, say, to hold our DNA together, or potassium to power our optic nerves so that we can see?

In The Human Elements, physicist and award-winning author Anja Røyne takes us on an astonishing journey through chemistry and physics, introducing the building blocks from which we humans—and the world—are made. Not only does Røyne explain why our bodies need iron, phosphorus, silicon, potassium, and many more elements in just the right amounts in order to function properly; she also takes us on a tour around the world to where these precious elements are found (some of them in ever-shrinking quantities).

Røyne makes us understand how precarious the balance that keeps us and our environment alive really is, how there are finite amounts of our life-giving elements available to us, and how, from the smallest to the grandest scale, the world and everything that lives in it are wonderfully interconnected. The Human Elements will make you look at the world and your place in it in an entirely new way.