Joe Schwarcz's second collection of essays (see my pick for May for the first) about chemistry in everyday life begins with a Preface in which he confronts a door-to-door salesman of water filters with some basic information about the chemistry of water treatment. It nicely complements the Michael Shermer's comments about bottled water, above. Schwarcz continues with sections on the chemistry of health, food, history, a miscellany ("Chemistry Here, There, and Everywhere"), and some examples of pseudoscience. Because of my interest in that last topic, I ended up reading this book backwards. It doesn't make any difference - Schwarcz does an outstanding job of explaining chemistry to a lay audience, and the chapters can be read in any order. "The Genie in the Bottle" was reviewed by Jeff Kovac in
Joe Schwarcz