Ignore the journalistic title: Emsley, a professional chemist, now a freelance writer, has written a really interesting popular account of just this one element in all its manifestations (he says that it contains all the stuff he collected while writing an academic textbook but couldn't fit in). It covers the history of the discovery and development of pure phosphorus and the exploitation - biologically, commercially, criminally, militarily - of its properties.

Sometimes the account strays a little far from the science: historical accounts of the Bryant and May Strike (connection: matches) or the Hamburg Fire Storm (connection: bombs), and a whole chapter on spontaneous human combustion. But all in all, a worthwhile read. Recently fallen out-of-print but freely available secondhand. paperback 336pp; index; references.