This book explores what holds things together (for a while), what breaks them apart, and why the answers have a direct bearing on our everyday lives. When author Eberhart was growing up in the 1960s, he learned that splitting an atom leads to a terrible explosion--which prompted him to worry that when he cut into anything, he could unleash a nuclear cataclysm. Years later, as a chemistry professor, he remembered this childhood fear when he began to...