Chain Reaction: How Chemistry Shapes Us and Our World

We all have a relationship with chemistry. Bonds between molecules, forged and broken in the blink of an eye, animate everything from the food we eat and the clothes we wear to the ways we treat illness and construct our homes. It’s a relationship we nurture every day, whether we know it or not, and for leading chemist Ijeoma Uchegbu, it was serious from the beginning.

In Chain Reaction, Uchegbu shows us the world through a chemist’s eyes, revealing the intricate science we take for granted every day: how our bodies’ most fundamental chemical structure, our DNA, is estimated to be two meters long, resting tightly within each of our cells; how egg yolks are held together by weak chemical bonds that make them primed for immersion into salad dressings; and how the chemical makeup of PFAs, or “forever chemicals,” makes them so good at sticking around.

Along the way, we travel from Uchegbu’s home in London to Nigeria, where cooking experiments go awry in her family kitchen, and to Italy, where the chemically inert compounds that make up stained glass keep medieval windows shining. The careful interplay of bonds and molecules brings a sense of order and wonder to the chaos of our lives, she shows, and we don’t have to wear a lab coat or study solutions in beakers to appreciate it.

For readers of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and anyone who wanted to be like Elizabeth Zott in Lessons in Chemistry, Chain Reaction is a lively and intimate portrait of the wondrous and under—explored field that shapes our everyday lives.