20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Organic Chemistry for Beginners, July 2, 2004
This review is from: Organic Chemistry (Hardcover)
Organic Chemistry is often mistaken to be a subject to be of rote memorization. having a bachelors in chemical engineering, i was introduced to organic chemistry during my junior days. i always hated organic chemistry for the way i was presented was a mere reaction and the reagents. Entering the graduate school, i was forced to learn organic chemistry, whereby i accidentally encountered this book. Reading the first few pages of the book, it was damn lucid to my mind, that organic chemistry is not memorization of a bunch of reactions, but its LOGIC. believe me, i as much as everybody hated org chem and i can't believe that i am writing a review on this book.
coming to the book, this book is intended to be used as two semester course. the first semester you usually end up reading the first 13 chapters. It is here i recommend to use caution, as they form the foundation for the remaining chapters. The first chapters through alcohols and alkenes is presented excellently with the author meticulously providing the reaction mechanisms. although the material presented is overwhelming to the intro students, you have to be patient and always make sure you do your homework by solving the problems and reviewing the concepts before you proceed to the next level. The author has presented an excellent recap at the end of the first 13 chapters. Quite honestly, it will teach you the logic behind the product formation, which u should be able to deduce by logic.
it is the second part of the book, where it gets a little stinky. the author didn't provide a good recap at most of the reactions in the chapter ending, but nevertheless presented the logic, behind the formation of the product, so if you can recap yourself after each chapter with notes, then by the end of the next 13 chapters you should pretty much be able to reasonably predict the product for almost most of the reactions. concepts like the use of different oxidising and reducing agents, enolate formation and the carbonyl compounds have been dealt almost thoroughly. i would say it could be dealt in further detail, but it suffices for someone who wishes to learn organic chemistry.
i have read the book and solved the exercises, and trust me, i knew nothing about org and in about six months out of my own interest i am now at a stage with hardwork able to pursue synthetic chemistry as my expertise. i believe this book not only helped to learn org chem, but helped me to make my career choice.
a good book teaches you the concepts behind the theory, but a great book inspires you. i belive this to be a great book.
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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fuzzy Chemistry, October 2, 2003
This review is from: Organic Chemistry (Hardcover)
Review for the '99... I started to use this book from chapter 1-4 and I already dislike it. For instance the nomenclatature section does not explain what is the IUPAC naming for compounds pertaining functional groups well enough. The spectroscopy part, is too basic, it does not present a in-depth view of how important functional groups absorb the IR spectra. Finally, the answer that appear at the back of the book are to few, out of about 40 problems only the solution for 10 of them appear. This makes it difficult if a student wants to check an answer and does not have the solutions manual. If this book continues to be like that, I think that I might study from another book, a Professor recommended me Seyhan Ege.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
This book will do more to confuse the student, April 26, 2005
This review is from: Organic Chemistry (Hardcover)
This book is so poorly organized that even the instructor who taught from it did not go through it sequential manner. Difficult subject matter is not covered in big picture to small detail way, but instead is spread through out the book with little or no information on WHY things in organic chemistry work they way they do, and then it is not even cohesively brought to a summary.
There are not nearly enough mechanisms nor complicated synthesis. It does touch on retro synthetic analysis but then offers very little opportunity for the student to practice complicated and varied synthesis. The problems given at the end of the chapter are way to simplistic! It seems that this book tries to complicate Org much more than neccessary.
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