We describe how complex concepts in macroscopic chemistry, namely, thermodynamics and kinetics, can be taught at considerable depth both at the first-year undergraduate as well as upper levels. We begin with a careful treatment of PV diagrams, and by pictorially integrating the appropriate area in a PV diagram, we introduce work. This starting point allows us to elucidate the concept of state functions and nonstate functions. The students readily appreciate that for a given transition, the area enclosed by the PV curve (work) depends on the path taken. It is then argued that heat, within this chosen framework, is a consequence of energy conservation and the fact that work is not a state function. This leads to a visual introduction of all the components involved in the first law of thermodynamics. The PV diagrams are then used to introduce entropy as being related to the maximum possible work to be done by the system. This macroscopic description of entropy is then related to the usual microscopic view of Boltzmann. This equivalence connects the area inside the PV diagram (work from a specific kind of pathway) and the number of microstates involved in the Boltzmann expression. The connection between the macroscopic and microscopic description of entropy also illuminates the exponential dependence of the number of microstates (or probability) on "an energy," known as free energy. The Arrhenius picture of chemical kinetics then readily follows from the exponential dependence stated above, and finally, a reactive event is viewed as a statistically rare event, to further clarify the appearance of entropy in the rate expression.