Vanity, Vitality, and Virility: The Science behind the Products You Love to Buy

John Emsley's Vanity, Vitality, and Virility is a crash course in consumer and medical chemistry. He examines many spheres of everyday life -- including makeup, drugs, plastics, and food -- to get a deep look at the chemistry at work. At some points, yes, I did start to glaze over when each chemical was listed and each of their interactions with the human body was laid out, but overall, with multiple re-readings, I might start to retain a lot of the chemistry here. I learned at lot more about chlorinates than I expected, to name one. Emsley does well to go through the actual history of the science conducted to delineate the good, bad, and ugly about corporate chemistry. Very refreshingly, he ends with a plea to young scientists to come show more and help in the field, and that can't be bad at all. show less

A fairly standard "chemistry in everyday life" book.
Better than many of them, but not really outstanding.

Like so many of this genre, there is too little emphasis on trying to provide a framework for everything, and too much "stamp collecting", ie the simple reporting of unconnected facts.