CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Infinities in a Grain of Sand -- 1. A Case of Misdirection -- Political Hijacking -- The Temporary End of Sustainable Industrial Development -- The Planet Goes Nano -- 2. The Incredible Shrinking Chip -- A Mythical Speech -- The Giants of Miniaturization -- From Electron to Electronics -- Enter Gordon Moore -- A Needle Upright on a Football Pitch -- The First Limits to Miniaturization -- Contagious Miniaturization -- Welcome to the Quantum World -- Pardon Me, Did You Say "Mesoscopic"? -- The Electronics of Tomorrow -- The Guiding Thread -- 3. Staying at the Bottom -- Birth of the Molecule -- So How Big is a Molecule? -- Maxwell's Demon -- How to Connect a Molecule -- Man Moves Atom -- And Yet It Moves! -- The First Experiments in Nanophysics -- The Mechanics of a Molecule -- The Advantage of Staying at the Bottom -- 4. Monumentalization -- The Advent of Molecule Devices -- A Wire… -- An Ampermeter… -- And a Cantilever -- Molecule Machines -- Calculating Molecules -- Quantum Computing Molecules -- Molecular Factories -- Bigger and Bigger? -- The Retreat to Nanomaterials -- 5. Nannobacteria -- Ripples from a Meteorite -- Surrounded by Nanoaliens -- The Missing Link -- The Molecular Fabrication of Life -- The Lessons of Mother Nature -- 6. Who's Afraid of Nanotechnologies? -- AMOs: Atomically Modified Organisms -- Another Threat on the Horizon: Nanomaterials -- Electronic Spies -- On the Road to Nanomedicine? -- Potential Military Applications -- Where Next? -- In Search of Common Sense -- Appendix I: A Short History of Microscopy -- X-Ray Diffraction -- Copper Phthalocyanine in Pictures -- The Birth of Electron Microscopy -- The Scanning Tunneling Microscope -- Appendix II: Trials and Tribulations of a Prefix -- Bibliography -- Works by Multiple Authors -- Other References.