Reactions: The Private Life of Atoms

Illustrated with remarkable new full-color images—indeed, one or more on every page—and written by one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Reactions offers a compact, pain-free tour of the inner workings of chemistry.

Reactions begins with the chemical formula almost everyone knows—the formula for water, H2O—a molecule with an "almost laughably simple chemical composition." But Atkins shows that water is also rather miraculous—it is the only substance whose solid form is less...