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 ponder the fact that we know more about how to split an atom than we do about how a pane of glass breaks. Here, Eberhart leads us on an exploration of all the cracks, clefts, fissures, and faults examined in the field of materials science, and everything from the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger to the crashing of your hard drive.--From publisher description.