Customer Reviews

General Chemistry (Dover Books on Chemistry)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When Linus Pauling was teaching undergraduates at Caltech, he found that none of the existing undergrad texts would serve his purpose.So he decided to write his own. This was in the 1940's. The result, 'General Chemistry', even after more than 50 years, is one of the best introductions to chemistry at the University level that I know of. I discovered this book in my sophomore year and after that I couldn't put it down. If you really read this book thoroughly, you can probably say that you have an excellent grasp of most of the fundamental principles of chemistry. Pauling's masterly style of explaining the essentials without compromising on information is unmatched. The small, simple calculations that he illustrates in each chapter are enlightening. In addition, the book is lavishly illustrated with beautiful figures by Roger Hayward. Pauling has a special knack of bringing out the flavor of seemingly boring but important topics like thermochemistry and ionic equilibrium. If you want one book that will launch your chemical knowledge on the right trajectory, trust me and buy this one. You will be enlightened by it forever.

This is an interesting, if somewhat dated and eccentric textbook by the man who was probably the leading chemist of the twentieth century. It is full of interesting insight, and written with real flair, so much unlike the typical textbook today produced by the textbook publishing machines.

Let me give a couple of examples, good and bad, of what makes this book interesting, but also exasperating.

The book is the only freshman chemistry text I know of that has a derivation of the Boltzmann distribution P ~ e^(-E/kT), a very basic relation in the kinetic theory of gases and in fact in all of statistical physics. The derivation is simpler than most, which makes it a real jewel especially at this level, where most people would think it doesn't belong.

On the other hand, the section on chemical bonding, which is actually where Pauling made his reputation, is very eccentric, like the author, so much so that it makes the book unsuitable as the sole text for a course. It is all based on sp3 hybrid orbitals. As far as I can tell, sp2 and sp hybrids are never mentioned. With the sp3 story, Pauling is able to account surprisingly well for some systematics of bond lengths. Whether this is fortuitous or not, I don't know, but it is interesting. On the other hand, without sp2 and sp hybrids, he is completely unable to give the standard, very simple, beautiful account of bond angles. A student learning introductory chemistry from this text who then went into organic chemistry would soon be at a disadvantage without knowing the theory of hybrid orbitals that everyone else would get from any of the standard contemporary texts.

My recommendation: use this text as a very insightful, quirky supplement. The price is certainly right.

The text that comes closest, in my opinion, in seriousness, if not eccentricity, is the contemporary text by Oxtoby and coauthors. It is too highbrow though for most college introductory chemistry courses.

Even though this is NOT the most up to date and technically correct text out there, it is still the best introduction to general chemistry I've seen which is why I rated it 5 stars (I refuse to dock it points for being old, unlike other reviews of other books I've seen). I found a copy at a garage sale, best four bucks I've spent in a while. The format of this book is superb, basing thermodynamics on his discussion of statistical mechanics and QM-he found it makes learning much more smooth, and I happen to agree. If someone would get permission to update this book and not much more, perfect general chem text for a college sequence. For those who'd like more physical and mathematical detail, the appendices are chock full of derivations, integrations and connections to make your heart swoon. Excellent book.

Linus Pauling's treatise on general chemistry is exciting and interesting. The book presents very basic but in-depth discussion of chemical phenomena such as thermodynamics and molecular structure. It is clear, reader-friendly, and easy to read. It is not meant to be just a textbook but a fun book for evening reading. No mathematical background is assumed. I recommend this book for undergraduate students as well as everyone who is interested in reading science but curbed by all the mathematical manipulations.

For people who are serious about learning chemistry, this is without a doubt the best general chemistry book available. The treatment of fundamentals is more rigorous than in standard texts, however it is not more difficult to follow. Pauling's writing style, and ability to explain concepts clearly, are truly admirable. The depth and coverage of the book are also very impressive. While some of the nomenclature has fallen out of fashion, this is a very trivial issue when weighed against the overall quality of the text, and anyone planning a future in chemistry who cannot or will not learn the older conventions along with the new is going to have some trouble down the road anyway. An update, or new edition would not improve the real substance of this book. Colorful new general chemistry texts retail for approximately 10-fold the price of this fat little workhorse, and publishers would have you believe they are next to worthless when the newer new edition comes out after 2 years. It is difficult to justify not buying this book, and if you are serious about learning chemistry, and want to learn in more depth than will be covered in your general chemistry class, then you really need to own this book.

This is my 800th published review on Amazon so I thought I'd try to do something a little special. I review a lot of non-fiction and science books in various areas, and when I saw Pauling's classic text recently, I knew it fit the bill.

This is the unabridged Dover 1988 republication of the original 3rd edition published by W.H. Freeman and Co. in 1970 (the 1st ed. was 1947, if I remember right). At 972 pages, 26 long chapters, 16 appendices, and 283 figures and illustrations, it's a monster of a book even for a chemistry text.

When the text first appeared, it marked a major landmark and innovation in the teaching of chemistry in the extent to which Pauling was able to present the entire subject of chemistry in terms of its underlying unifying principles rather than as a collection of unrelated chemical facts. Pauling closely ties in the observable phenomena of chemistry with the most powerful theories, which he says include modern atomic and molecular theories, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics.

Not the least of its virtues is that it is, despite the high-level treatment, surprisingly easy and enjoyable to read. The occasional mathematical treatments aren't easy for the beginner, certainly, but overall the book is quite approachable in terms of the style.

Pauling presents statistical mechanics first since he believes it's easier to grasp for the beginning student than chemical thermodynamics. Although there is some advanced math and calculus, as I said, most of that is located in the many appendices. Here you'll find many topics discussed in much more mathmatical rigor and detail, such as Fourier analysis applied to crystal structures, the wave functions for hydrogenlike orbitals and bond orbitals, an alternative derivation of the Boltzmann Distrubition Law, the entropy of a perfect gas, electric polarizabilities and electric dipoles, moments, and other topics.

All of these noteworthy points aside, though, perhaps the greatest strength of the book is Pauling's ability to explain in clear and concise prose even the most difficult concepts, without getting lost in a morass of extraneous details. He also often gives practical examples to illustrate how seemingly esoteric chemical principles can be applied to very ordinary everyday phenomena. For example, the usual definition of an acid or base is that of a proton donor or acceptor. However, the Lewis theory of acids and bases proposes that a base is anything that has available an unshared pair of electrons, and an acid is anything that could attach itself to such a pair. This theory has the advantage of being able to explain the ability of substances other than hydrogen to change the color of indicators. Another application is the explanation of salt formation by the reactions of acidic oxides and basic oxides.

I just had one final comment. At this point much of my general chemistry is pretty rusty and I'm more up on specific topics such as metallurgy. But Pauling does a fine job of explaining important applied topics like this as well, and there are many very readable and clear explanations of important practical metallurgical applications and how they work, including basic metals and their properties and that of their most important alloys, and how basic operations work such as that of a blast furnace, reverberation furnace, Bessemer furnace, and so on. Pauling is equally at home dealing with the advanced physics of the Schrodinger wave equation or the more mundane aspects of industrial metallurgical operations.

Altogether, this is a great text by a great scientist which has yet to be surpassed in its powerful, unified, theoretical approach, its clear and concise style, and its completeness of coverage.

Although Linus Pauling is a Nobel Prize laureat, his text "General Chemistry" can be easily read and understood by the average high school graduate. The text is extremely comprehensive, yet straight forward. For more advanced readers, Pauling has included appendices, such as one on the tetrahedral bond, proving with such simplicity and elegance that the tetrahedral bond is the strongest bond of a four bond system.

Just remember when reading resonance that structures don't actually resonate from one Lewis structure to the other. It kinda is confusing. Some sections he sounds like he's saying the compounds resonate and in other sections he says that all valid lewis structures contribute to the overall structure. What I really love about this general chem book is the calculus. Almost no general chem text uses calculus anymore, which I guess is designed to be a gen ed for a non-chem major. Unfortunately it hurts the chem major who will be almost overwhelmed with higher math when p-chem rolls around.

Rooted in both vigor and simplicity, this chemistry text will amaze you. Pauling is very mindful of how the student ought to recieve information and in that he carefully picks the order of topics. Too often people disreguard the importance of the presentation of information. It's a shame because they are being willfully ignorant to techniques that catalyze and promote learning. Our brains are more responsive to associative learning because biologically that's what goes on in neural circuitry. Anyways, it's best I don't spur off into a tangent. Buy this book. It taught me chemistry.

This is by far the best introductory book I have seen so far. It is very concise and thorough. There are no flashy pictures or cool sidenotes with the practical applications of the concepts. But the basic concepts are very well explained with lots of helpful diagrams. Also, the price of the book is very good. Hooray for Dover Publications for publishing this masterpiece as such reasonable price!