Well-told anecdotes about bones, bird droppings and bombs outline the multifaceted nature of the element phosphorus.

In one of the many anecdotes in The Devil’s Element, author Dan Egan describes how he asks a farmer in the Walloon countryside if he ever comes across human bones on his lands. A strange question? Not when you realize that this area was the scene of the Battle of Waterloo, where more than 50,000 casualties occurred already in the first 10 hours. The farmer’s negative answers offers food for thought, as fallen soldiers were not repatriated in those days, and human bones are preserved for a long time. So what happened to them?