Hydrogen bonds range from the very strong, comparable with covalent bonds, to the very weak, comparable with van der Waals forces. Most hydrogen bonds are weak attractions with a binding strength about one-tenth of that of a normal covalent bond. Nevertheless, they are very important. Without them, all wooden structures would collapse, cement would crumble, oceans would vaporize, and all living things would disintegrate into inanimate matter.
An easy-to-read supplement to the often brief descriptions of hydrogen bonding found in most undergraduate chemistry and molecular biology...

Hydrogen bonds are weak attractions, with a binding strength less than one-tenth that of a normal covalent bond. However, hydrogen bonds are of extraordinary importance; without them all wooden structures would collapse, cement would crumble, oceans would vaporize, and all living things would disintegrate into random dispersions of inert matter.
Hydrogen Bonding in Biological Structures is informative and eminently usable. It is, in a sense, a Rosetta stone that unlocks a wealth of information from the language of crystallography and makes it accessible to all scientists. (From a...