Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molecules

""Kevlar [a DuPont product] is one of the best candidates... for tethering a space platform.... But gram for gram, silk is stronger still,"" explains Philip Ball (H2O: A Biography of Water) in Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molecules. Thus does this Nature magazine writer and editor render practical and navigable the abstractions of invisible science. ""Our metabolic processes are primarily about making molecules. Cells cannot survive without constantly reinventing themselves: making new amino acids for proteins, new lipids for membranes."" But Ball's biological explanation for life, thought and action is no dry, joyless drone: ""That a conspiracy of molecules might have created King Lear... makes the world seem an enchanted place."" Pop-science enthusiasts will eat it up. Illus. (Sept.)