This book is a brief and accessible popular science text intended for a broad audience and of
particular interest also to science students and specialists. Using a minimum of mathematics a
number of qualitative and quantitative examples and clear illustrations the author explains
the science of thermodynamics in its full historical context focusing on the concepts of
energy and its availability and transformation in thermodynamic processes. His ultimate aim is
to gain a deep understanding of the second law-the increase of entropy-and its rather
disheartening message of a universe descending inexorably into chaos and disorder. It also
examines the connection between the second law and why things go wrong in our daily lives.
Readers will enhance their science literacy and feel more at home on the science side of author
C. P. Snow's celebrated two-culture science-humanities divide and hopefully will feel more at
home in the universe knowing that the disorder we deal with in our daily lives is not anyone's
fault but Nature's.
