#5 Napoleon's Buttons

This is one of those books that I'm going to suggest that my students take a look at when I get asked the inevitable question "Why do we have to learn chemistry?"  I know it won't satisfy all of them, but I do think that it might connect a few dots surrounding the mysteries of chemistry and why they are important.  The chemical properties of substances all around us make them so desirable that people go to war to get them, or to keep them, or devise ways to synthesize them so that they can go to war to get other molecules....  It's all very fascinating.
Le Couteur and Burreson open "Napoleon's Buttons" with the hypothesis that one of the reasons that Napoleon's army failed in their campaign in Russian is because of their buttons.  Their buttons were made of tin and tin doesn't do so well in cold temperatures.  It becomes brittle.  And when your buttons are brittle, they don't do such a good job holding up your trousers. And when your trousers won't stay up, well it seems its hard to win a war that way.
This book is talks about 17 molecules, most of them organic (meaning molecules with hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen in them) and the impact that they have had in human history.  It's hard to pick my favorite molecule, but my favorite story involves a chemist, his kitchen, his wife's cotton apron, some nitric acid and an explosion.  Research these days isn't nearly as exciting.