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Joe Schwarcz is the doyen of North American newspaper science columnists. And his latest collection (The Genie in the Bottle, Palgrave, £13.99) is another sparkling effervescence of everyday chemistry. Starting with a hilarious description of his kitchen encounter with a water-filter salesman out to unmask the poisons in his tap water, Schwarcz tours the origins of Epsom salts in a Surrey cow field, the microbiology of kissing, burning alligators, thalidomide, and the continuing battles between spoon-bender Uri Geller and his nemesis, the Amazing Randi. Always serious; always entertaining.