I was put off by the typos in the foreword. But Atkins on chemistry is generally outstanding, and he designed the illustrations himself. So I shall persist. I kept on persisting, but it turns out that chemistry is hard.

Blimey, I really should read more of Atkins' work. I fell in love with Chemistry after reading his book 'Molecules' as a teenager. Atkins writes beautifully poetic descriptions of the chemical world and renders a rather dreary topic- mechanisms of reactions- rather fascinating. This book would be fabulous for someone wanting to bridge the gap between GCSE and A-level Chemistry. My only complaint is the poor diagrams; they are very small and the space-filling models do not really allow us to see what is happening. The prose, however, is faultless. ( )

A beautifully printed and elegantly written little book designed to charm general readers into becoming appreciators of the science of chemistry. Many of the page corners are taken up by color diagrams of ensembles of molecules. It's meatier than it looks, and any non-chemist who has followed all the details will have learned a lot.