Sunday, February 12, 2012

Advanced Organic Chemistry: Part B: Reaction and Synthesis PDF

Rating: (32 reviews) Author: Francis A. Carey ISBN : 9780387683508 New from $91.82 Format: PDF
Direct download links available PRETITLE Advanced Organic Chemistry: Part B: Reaction and Synthesis (Advanced Organic Chemistry / Part B: Reactions and Synthesis) [Hardcover] POSTTITLE from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
The two-part, fifth edition of Advanced Organic Chemistry has been substantially revised and reorganized for greater clarity. The material has been updated to reflect advances in the field since the previous edition, especially in computational chemistry. Part B describes the most general and useful synthetic reactions, organized on the basis of reaction type. It can stand-alone; together, with Part A: Structure and Mechanisms, the two volumes provide a comprehensive foundation for the study in organic chemistry. Companion websites provide digital models for students and exercise solutions for instructors.
Direct download links available for PRETITLE Advanced Organic Chemistry: Part B: Reaction and Synthesis POSTTITLE
  • Series: Advanced Organic Chemistry / Part B: Reactions and Synthesis
  • Hardcover: 1352 pages
  • Publisher: Springer; 5th edition (September 6, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 038768350X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0387683508
  • Product Dimensions: 2.7 x 7.5 x 9.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 5 pounds

Advanced Organic Chemistry: Part B: Reaction and Synthesis PDF

This review is specifically meant to refer to the latest edition (5th ed.) of this book. The earlier editions were quite good, but the 5th edition completely misses the mark. Ordinarily, one would think that a book such as this would get better and better with each new edition. Not so with this book. For some reason, the 5th edition is loaded with mistakes.....many of these appear to be typesetting errors (e.g., atoms in the wrong place, pentavalent carbons, nonsense intermediates within reaction pathways, etc.). It is terribly disappointing. I do not know what happened at the publisher this time, but, in good conscience, they really should not have released this book the way it is. It does not appear to have been the authors' fault, but rather it was likely the fault of Springer (the publisher). This looks like an example of the mindless side of capitalism....large publishing companies who have already taken over much of their competition also have ridiculous deadlines to meet quarterly earnings goals, so they rush through the publication process and end up turning out garbage. The only way that these companies ultimately avoid getting into a heap of trouble with the FTC or other consumer advocate agencies is by issuing online addendums filled with corrections to the myriad of errors. Ask yourselves, is that why you want to buy a new book..... so that you have to download a 50-page corrections addendum to fix all of the errors that the publisher missed or opted not to correct in the first place? This sort of thing is happening more and more these days in the publishing industry, even with software. And the larger and larger these publishing companies become, the more we see it.
As a previous review suggested, this book fell short of expectations. There are in fact quite a few errors (i.e. pentavalent carbons, etc.); such errors are especially prevalent in the problem section of the book. Moreover, the book does contain many outdated problems.

Although the organization of the book isn't horrible, it isn't a very readable text, mainly due to the detail they go into in explanations of seemingly irrelevant things. In other words, this book is not very conducive to skimming, or good at all for review; especially when it comes to the carbon acid section. Rather than simply stating general trends of carbon acids, they go into detail about the different methods for measuring the pKas of carbon acids, and the different advantages and disadvantages to such methods. While this may be of interest to some people, it simply makes the section much less readable, perhaps a short summary at the end of each section summarizing general concepts would help alleviate this error. So rather than having to sift through 20 pages of mostly worthless crap to find one simple concept, it would be briefly outlined in the end (or beginning) of a section, or chapter.

Perhaps the thing that annoys me most about this book, however, is the absolutely horrible way in which structures are presented in the book. Rather than sticking to simple Line-bond structures (or carbon skeletons, whatever you know them as), molecules are presented as an obnoxious mixture of both. In some cases (i.e. ylides, and such) actually labling carbons and hydrogen atoms can be useful. However, when you get to the problem section and see something to the effect of - CH2=C(CH2)3CH2CHO - rather than a simple line-bond structure, it becomes obnoxious very quickly.

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