Customer Reviews

Designing Organic Syntheses: A Programmed Introduction to the Synthon Approach

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Back in the early '80s, I struggled with synthetic problems in sophomore organic. All my teachers told the classes to try retrosynthesis, but they were not able to communicate just how, in practice, this should work. After reading just 2 or 3 chapters (and they are short--I read them over dinner one evening), I thought I would go crazy with excitement. Things suddenly made so much sense. I think I lost a lot of sleep during the next few days as I devoured the little book. Few other chemistry books--if any--ever have engaged me so. In a class of its own.

In addition to the comment above (by bklassen@xula.com) i wanna say that Since the all synthesis mechanisms in the book are tried in real time, we can trust to the plans described as retrosynthetic methods.This helps us to use the methods without any doubt.More specificly i can say that when i was reading book i sometimes surprised:'How can this selectivity occurs!'.But in fact it was so and i had to accept and try to find its reason..For the last word,it really worths its high cost..

The author coaches the reader through retrosynthetic analysis. He does a good job of explaining why specific bonds are chosen to be broken, giving a solid overall strategy to designing a synthesis. What he assumes is that the reader is an expert in chemical transformations. In other words, if you wanted to create an amino-substituted aromatic, he assumes you know that you could (as well as knowing how to) attach a nitro group and then reduce it. The author makes no attempt, either as a review chapter or appendix, to bring the reader up to speed on such matters. I suspect the book was created as part of the author's teaching duties and that his students were provided information separately that would fill in the gaps.
Looking through my organic chemistry text, Organic Chemistry by P. Y. Bruice, the retrosynthetic approaches are in there with information on how to effect the transformations. I should have saved the money and just reviewed the Bruice text.

The book is fine, however it is definitely for a graduate student in Organic Chemistry.