Creations of Fire

Аннотация

A s a wise chemist once said, "There is an important question that must be asked when approaching any difficult project for the first time, and that question is, Why bother?" Consequently before writing this histOlY of chemistry, we had to ask ourselves, with so many excellent histories already available, why should we write one more? One obvious reason of course is that there are new threads, such as high-temperature superconductors, buckminsterfullerene, and the cold-fusion fiasco, that need to be woven in. But another reason is approach: History is open to interpretation (even history captured on videotape, as we have seen), so there is always something to be gained from trying a different approach.