Chemistry is what everyone hopes for when meeting somebody for the first time. Yet, too often, relationships soon evolve into a union akin to rubbing two wet sticks together and hoping for fire, then hanging on for dear life should the spark produce flames of any size. In Attempted Chemistry, Jeff Gomez, author of the cult favorite Our Noise, charts the lives and loves of a variety of Manhattan men and women who find that it’s not establishing the foundation of a relationship that’s difficult, it’s building the whole house that’s hard. In sharp prose and dead-on dialogue, these characters lead lives of restless discontent and desperation. There’s Daniel and Eileen, a newly cohabiting boyfriend and girlfriend who are quickly realizing the difference between dating and living together; Josh and Kendra, a young married couple who are facing the first real challenges of their marriage; Keith and Brie, a couple who lie to themselves as much as to each other; and the singles Rick, Mike, Leslie, and Cressandra, all of whom try for love in various guises, yet just can’t seem to make a connection. Sad, funny, and poignant, Attempted Chemistry is a book about trying to find communion with another soul; a process that all of us have gone through at some point in our lives, in our search for love, happiness, and, of course, chemistry.

Includes section "New Books"

This book describes the bond valence model, a description of acid-base bonding which is becoming increasingly popular particularly in fields such as materials science and mineralogy where solid state inorganic chemistry is important. Recent improvements in crystal structure determination have allowed the model to become more quantitative. Unlike other models of inorganic chemical bonding, the bond valence model is simple, intuitive, and predictive, and can be used for analysing crystal structures and the conceptual modelling of local as well as extended structures. This is the first book to explore in depth the theoretical basis of the model and to show how it can be applied to synthetic and solution chemistry. It emphasizes the separate roles of the constraints of chemistry and of three-dimensional space by analysing the chemistry of solids. Many applications of the model in physics, materials science, chemistry, mineralogy, soil science, surface science, and molecular biology are reviewed. The final chapter describes how the bond valence model relates to and represents a simplification of other models of inorganic chemical bonding.