From proverbs to technical arguments, from anecdotes to tales of folklore, chemist and philosopher Pierre Laszlo takes us through the kingdom of "white gold." With "enthusiasm and freshness" ( ), he mixes literary analysis, history, anthropology, biology, physics, economics, art history, political science, chemistry, ethnology, and linguistics to create a full body of knowledge about the everyday substance that rocked the world and still brings zest to the ordinary. is a tour de force about a substance that is one of the very foundations of civilization.