Organic Chemistry 3rd Edition

Book Preface

My goal in writing Organic Chemistry was to create a text that showed students the beauty and logic of organic chemistry by giving them a book that they would use. This text is based on lecture notes and handouts that were developed in my own organic chemistry courses over my 30-year teaching career. I have followed two guiding principles: use relevant and interesting applications to illustrate chemical phenomena, and present the material in a student-friendly fashion using bulleted lists, solved problems, and extensive illustrations and summaries. Organic Chemistry is my attempt to simplify and clarify a course that intimidates many students—to make organic chemistry interesting, relevant, and accessible to all students, both chemistry majors and those interested in pursuing careers in biology, medicine, and other disciplines, without sacrificing the rigor they need to be successful in the future.

The Basic Features

• Style This text is different—by design. Today’s students rely more heavily on visual imagery to learn than ever before. The text uses less prose and more diagrams, equations, tables, and bulleted summaries to introduce and reinforce the major concepts and themes of organic chemistry.
• Content Organic Chemistry accents basic themes in an effort to keep memorization at a minimum. Relevant examples from everyday life are used to illustrate concepts, and this material is integrated throughout the chapter rather than confi ned to a boxed reading. Each topic is broken down into small chunks of information that are more manageable and easily learned. Sample problems are used as a tool to illustrate stepwise problem solving. Exceptions to the rule and older, less useful reactions are omitted to focus attention on the basic themes.
• Organization Organic Chemistry uses functional groups as the framework within which chemical reactions are discussed. Thus, the emphasis is placed on the reactions that different functional groups undergo, not on the reactions that prepare them. Moreover, similar reactions are grouped together so that parallels can be emphasized. These include acid–base reactions (Chapter 2), oxidation and reduction (Chapters 12 and 20), radical reactions (Chapter 15), and reactions of organometallic reagents (Chapter 20).

By introducing one new concept at a time, keeping the basic themes in focus, and breaking complex problems down into small pieces, I have found that many students find organic chemistry an intense but learnable subject. Many, in fact, end the year-long course surprised that they have actually enjoyed their organic chemistry experience.