Inspired by how Money: A Story of Humanity (David McWilliams) demonstrates the co-evolution of money and society, Peter seeks to present the same theme with chemistry:

The Earth is a provider of raw materials: air, water, vegetation, and minerals. The modern world is a complex network of matter that has been conjured from these resources. Chemists have done that conjuring and have thereby provided the material infrastructure of civilization, an infrastructure deployed by engineers, technologists, farmers, physicians, and all who contribute to the world and its inhabitants. Yes, not all its contributions are benign: damage to the environment and damage to humans wrought by weaponry are chilling reminders of the other side of chemistry's coin. In the pages that follow, I survey all these contributions, not shirking from mentioning the malign but proportionately celebrating the overwhelmingly benign. The outlining of these contributions has another intention: to invite you to contribute to releasing the hidden potential of matter, perhaps in ways unanticipated now, just as the now ubiquitous semiconductors were not even imagined by the Victorians, by participating and extending the conjuring that chemistry represents. To include: the disciplines of chemistry (including its bursting out from its classical boundaries); the nature of matter; the manner of working.