Vanity, vitality and virility
John Emsley
Oxford: OUP 2004 | Pp259 | £18.99 | ISBN0 192 80509 6
Reviewed by Ann Lewis-Kell
This book was born from John Emsley's desire to let as many readers as possible know more about the many chemicals that they encounter in their everyday lives. Although not a coffee table book, the text is written at a level that should be easily understood by anyone who has studied A-level chemistry and the excellent glossary included will be a great help to non-chemists. Less chemically literate post-16 students are unlikely to read the book from cover to cover but perhaps will dip into it when they want to know more about a topic.
The main part of the book is divided into six chapters with headings such as Vanity, vitality, virility, Germs, It's all in the mind, and Polymers. This makes it easy for readers to pick out the areas that interest them. Each chapter is well organised and structured. I liked the bold large headings within the text, which help to focus the reader's attention, and when a new unfamiliar chemical term is introduced, eg a-hydroxy acids, the reader is advised to use the glossary.
In each chapter novel facts and stories are put into text boxes so that they don't detract from the general narrative. Part of each chapter gives an historical perspective on a particular topic, eg scurvy and vitamin C, and how Viagra, Prozac and even chewing gum became best-sellers. Each chapter has suggestions for further reading, which would be excellent background material for the more self-motivated learners. The postscript chapter provokes the reader to reflect on how media coverage influences the way the public view chemistry. The recent newspaper reports on the presence of Prozac in water supplies is a case in point.
Throughout the book the author attempts and succeeds to explain some important chemistry in a way that is accessible to a wider audience. For example, when explaining the meaning of parts per billion he states that 'five parts per billion is the same numerically as one second in six years'. For the non-chemically minded it will be refreshing to read the facts behind the myths of familiar products. In chapter one, which contains a lot of chemical detail, the sections on popular products such as skin moisturisers, sunblocks and sunscreens are very well written.
Overall, Vanity, vitality and virility provides an excellent and informative snapshot of many of the chemicals that we meet every day. Priced at £18.99, the book is not cheap but school and college libraries should buy a copy, as should forward-thinking sixthform science departments that want to encourage their students to think more about the benefits of chemistry and its future challenges.
