Reviews

The anecdote of the titular buttons is related in the introduction: supposedly, the tin buttons on the uniforms of Napoleon's army became brittle and disintegrated in the cold Russian winter, contributing to his defeat. Le Couteur, a chemistry teacher, and Burreson, an industrial chemist, expand this theme to explore how chemical properties of compounds have altered history. The impacts run the gamut from medicine (e.g., penicillin, vitamin C) to social change (e.g., the contraceptive pill and slavery perpetuated by the farming of glucose, or sugar cane, and cellulose, or cotton) to more direct historical incidents such as the Opium Wars or the spice trade spurring New World exploration. The authors violate the dictate of modern popular science writing that proscribes including chemical formulae but to good effect-by showing the structures of the compounds, they convey how shapes affect function. This book devotes more space to fewer substances than John Emsley's Molecules at an Exhibition, but it doesn't fall into the hyperbolic monomania of other popular "chemicals-that-changed-the-world" books like Simon Garfield's Mauve. Recommended for public and academic libraries.-Wade M. Lee, Univ. of Toledo Libs. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

"Well-conceived, well-done popular science." --Booklist