Customer Reviews

Organic Structural Spectroscopy

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As a student using this as a primary text in a graduate-level spectroscopy course, I found that this first edition text is far from polished and does not surpass the spectroscopy texts curretly avaiable on the market. Errors were found in the text and end-of-chapter problems. The extreme scarcity of worked problems and review questions with answers made it difficult for a student to test his or her grasp of the concepts. There is no study guide. Furthermore, the problems at the end of the chapter often relate poorly to what was stated in the chapter's text. As a result of these shortcomings, I turned to other, more established spectroscopy texts for clearer descriptions and understandable examples. Perhaps later editions will improve upon the first; however, I would advise against buying this text and recommend a more established spectroscopy textbook.

I teach the class this book is intended for: graduate level organic spectroscopy. It is a first edition, so there may be a glitch or two here and there, but I have been very pleased with it.

In my opinion, there are no ideal books out there. Either the background/theory is inadequate (e.g., Silverstein), the tables are hardly useful (e.g., Pavia), or there aren't enough problems. On the other extreme are NMR-only books like Gunther's or Schlichter that are beyond the scope of the course. While I personally would like to see more tables than are present in Lambert's book, they are a good start and will do very well for many people.

The book includes very reasonable introductions to a great variety of techniques. The section on ionization in mass spec, for instance, has subsections on LD, SIMS, FAB, MALDI, ESI, TS, and APCI on top of the usual EI and CI methods. In the optical spectroscopy section, there are good introductions to CD and ORD. The chapter on 2D NMR is also much more extensive than typical for these books.

There are 35 "integrated problems" in the back of the book, but I might like to have seen more problems associated with each chapter.

I assign this book with confidence, supplementing it with some tables and home grown problems. As far as I'm concerned, it's the class of the current (1999) lot.

This is one of the worst spectroscopy books, even by spectroscopy textbook standards. Providing a broad survey of spectroscopic techniques, our class encountered errors all over the book (just like the chemical literature!!). Example problems could have been better selected. I use the book for its tables (IR table, specifically) only. Experience and NMR calculation software will top this book as an aide to the synthetic chemist.

I used this book as a reference countless times during my graduate years, when I did a lot of IR and some UV-vis spectroscopy. In this capacity it was most useful. It is organized well for this purpose and the charts are comprehensive enough for a wide range of chemical spectra. It is also very helpful when you need a brief explanation of specific chemical shifts and the like.

I'm using this book in an introductory organic spectroscopy class, and have found it to be both mildly obscurantist and riddled with minor errors. There are (very) few worked examples in the text, and much of the exposition of process and technique would be enhanced by the inclusion of illustrative diagrams (which have frequently and inexplicably been left out in sections dealing with fairly complicated situations). Almost no physical explanations are given for the various spectral techniques and phenomenon covered in the book.

All in all, a frustrating experience.

I took a class in organic spectroscopy this year (spring 1999) and this was the primary textbook. My professor skipped some of the chapters and handed out supplementary materials instead. I don't know what was the motive to choose it as a textbook, i guess because it covers all, although superficially. If you are looking for a book on the subject, I suggest finding a few older ones that concentrate on subjects instead of something that wants to be the Holy Grail of Spectroscopy.