"Imagine chemistry as a community of dynamic characters, each with its own personality. This book is your essential guide to the explosive guys who fizz, react, and combine to make up everything around us" -- p. [4] of cover.

Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of...

"The best-selling author of Jim Henson: The Biography traces the story of the man behind such blockbuster franchises as Star Wars and Indiana Jones, offering insight into the challenges he overcame and his influential legacy, "--NoveList.