Book excerpt: To understand, maintain, and protect the physical environment, a basic understanding of chemistry, biology, and physics, and their hybrids is useful. Rapid Review of Chemistry for the Life Sciences and Engineering demystifies chemistry for the non-chemist who, nevertheless, may be a practitioner of some area of science or engineering requiring or involving chemistry. It provides quick and easy access to fundamental chemical principles, quantitative relationships, and formulas. Armed with select, contemporary applications, it is written in the hope to bridge a gap between chemists and non-chemists, so that they may communicate with and understand each other. Chapters 1–10 are designed to contain the standard material in an introductory college chemistry course. Chapters 11–15 present applications of chemistry that should interest and appeal to scientists and engineers engaged in a variety of fields. Additional features More than 100 solved examples clearly illustrated and explained with SI units and conversion to other units using conversion tables included Assists the reader to understand organic and inorganic compounds along with their structures, including isomers, enantiomers, and congeners of organic compounds Provides a quick and easy access to basic chemical concepts and specific examples of solved problems This concise, user-friendly review of general and organic chemistry with environmental applications will be of interest to all disciplines and backgrounds.