  We divide glass and viscous liquid sciences into two major research areas,
the first dealing with how to avoid crystals and so access the viscous liquid
state, and the second dealing with how liquids behave when no crystals form. We
review some current efforts to elucidate each area, looking at strategies for
vitrification of monatomic metals in the first, and the origin of the property
fragility in the second. Essential here is the non- trivial behavior of the
glassformer thermodynamics. We explore the findings on nonexponential
relaxationand dynamic heterogeneities in viscous liquids, emphasizing the way
in which direct excitation of the configurational modes has helped
differentiate configurational from nonconfigurational contributions to the
excess heat capacity. We then propose a scheme for understanding the relation
between inorganic network and non-network glassformers which includes the
anomalous case of water as an intermediate. In a final section we examine the
additional insights to be gained by study of the ergodicity-breaking,
glass-like, transitions that occur in disordering crystals. Here we highlight
systems in which the background thermodynamics is understood because the
ergodic behavior is a lambda transition. Water and the classical network
glassformers appear to be attenuated versions of these.
