useful in the laboratory yet me not well known to many chemists. In a book on glassblowing a section on metal working seems out of place. The author argues that he intends the book to be a handbook for the glassblower in the small laboratory who has to handle a great many different skills. This book, however, will hardly serve as the only reference tool such a. person uses and this reviewer questions the relevance of the metal working section. The book is well put together and on the whole carefully edited. The formula on page 23 is dimensionally incorrect. Some warning of eleetrooution hazard ought to be included with the hot wire glasscutter on page 58 which combines a water faucet and 110 a. c. I t is true that the circuit diagram contains an isolation transformer but this should be made more specific and grounded for safety's sake. Even better would be the use of a wash bottle or other ungrounded source of water. LAURENCE E. STRONG E A R ~ ACOLLEGE M R r c n ~ o n o I. N D I * ~ *
UNIT PROCESSES IN ORGANIC SYNTHESIS Edited hy P. H.Groggins, Chemical E n g i neer and Consultant. Fifth edition. McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., New York, 1070 pp. Many figs. and 1958. x tables. 16 X 23.5 cm. $17.50.
lar unit process. The authors are from industry, research organizations, and universities, so that several viewpoints will give a. well-rounded chapter. Some changes have been made as changes in the organic process industries show new emphasis is needed. Two chapters from the fourth edition have been dropped: diaaotisation and coupling, and the Friedel-Crafts reaction. This does not imply that these reactions are no longer important, but that advances in them have been slight and the material given in the fourth edition continues to be authoritative. The previous ohapter or sulfanation has been enlarged to sulfonation and sulfation to cover reactions of importance for synthetic detergents. The former ohapter an hydroformylation and the 0x0 reaction has been broadened to hydrocarbon synthesis and bydroformylation with considerable material on the Fisoher-Tropsch synthesis. The diverse materials and reactions for plastics and elastomers have caused the chapter on polymerization to be split into twosections, (1)principles of polymer chemistry, and (2) polymeri~ationpractice. The H t h edition of "Unit Processes in Oresnic Svnthesis" continues abreast
book. Umvsnsmv
OF
KENNETH A. KOBE TEXU
A ~ ~ T ITex*s N.
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ALMOST25 years have elapsed between the first and 6fth editions of "Unit Proces ses in Organic Synthesis." During this time the organic chemical industries have expanded enormously; many new industries have grown up based on new or hitherto unusual reactions. Likewise, "Unit Processes" has grown to keep pace with the expanding industries. It has been translated into five foreign languages and used world-wide. This popularity is due to the fact that theory and industrial practice sre combined in ~ a c hchapter so that the reader first understands the basic theory of the unit process, then learns how it is carried out industrially, what equipment is used, and other valuable information conoerning both the process and the products. Such informetion based on experience is invaluable to workers in countries just building their organic process industries. The fifth edition keeps up with the trend in the organic industries to apply more theory to the process and to make use of thermodynamics and kinetics wherever possible to predict equilibrium yield and the rate at which the product is formed. The first three chapters are new ones on ( I ) applications of thermodynamics in unit processes, (2) chemical kinetics, (3) chemical process kinetics. Within each ohapter on a unit process material is given on the thermodynamics and the kinetics of the particular reaetion. Thus, a much more fundamental viewpoint has been adopted in this edition. As before, each ohapter is written by one or more experts in the field of the particu-
FUNDAMENTALS OF CHEMISTRY
L Jean Bogert, Formerly Iostrudor in Medidne, University of Chicago. Eighth edition. W. B. Saunders Co., Philadel615 pp. 168 figs. phia, 1958. rviii 15 X 21 cm. $5.50.
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PROFESSOR Bogert's newest edition of his popular general chemistry textbook will be weleomed by its many users. While this new edition includes some of the more recent chemicd developments, it is rather seriously lacking in the most recent fundamental concepts. No college or nrofessiond school cbemistrv student
of bonding and structure in the more complex molecules are not presented. Theories on solubility and ionization are inadequately discussed. In view of the universal occurrence of coordination compounds in such places as blood, vitamins, chlorophyll, ete., it is surprising to find no mention of them. The book is very interestingly written. It should be a pleasure for students using it to read each ohapter, but it is not geared to oollege-level thinking. Even though the courses in which it may be used are terminal there is still too shallow a presentation of basic chemicsl principles. It compares mare favorably with current high school chemistry textbooks. SISTER MARY MARTINETTE. B.V.M. Mnmenmr* C o m ~ a ~ cxrc*ao, ~ L L I N O , ~
ELECTRONIC THEORIES OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY John William Boker, University of Leeds. Oxford University Ress, New York, 1958. vii 224 pp. 14.5 X 22 om. $4.80.
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THE purpme of this book, as stated in the preface, is to introduce a student who has completed a first course in organic chemistry to the field of reaction mecha nisms. To accomplish this end, "broad fundamental principles are applied to familiar organic molecules." A list of the ohapter titles indicates the material selected: The Nature of Chemical Binding Forces and of Chemical Reaction, Classical Structural Formulae: The Inductive Effect, Physical Interpretation of Covalency, The Conjugative Effect, Xuoleophilio Substitution Reactions at Saturated Carbon, Olefin-Forming Elimination Reactions, Additions to Unsaturated Compounds, Tautomerism, Esterificetion and Hydrolysis, Aromatic Substitution in Benzene and Its Simple Derivatives, and Saturated Remrmgements. The author has done an excellent job of presenting the material xhieh he has selected. The major points are not buried in a mass of detail. A student will achieve a framework of principles w-hieh he can fill out by reading more advanced texts and reference works. This text is not a reference work; in many parts the arguments a x summarized but details are omitted. There are no references to. specific points raised, but general references at the end of each chapter. These are almost exclusively British, the most recent being 1953. The place of this book is not as a text for a full-fledged mechanisms course. I t may well be a valuable supplement for an undergraduate student who has become interested in theories and mechanisms. JOHN D. REINHEIMER
CHAIN REACTIONS,AN INTRODUCTION
F. S. Dainton, Rofessor of Physical Chemistry, University of Leeds. Methuen & Co., London, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1957. 183 pp. 1 3 X 19 cm. $2.90. THISbook is in keeping with the highest traditions of the Metbuen Monographs on Chemical Subjects. It is concise, clear, and destined to he a classic in a field of recognized importance in contemporary chemistry. Its success in treatine a somewhat formidable nhase of in the subject matter of ohain processes and a writer of gret~tclarity, with a subject in need of up-to-date tterttment in the English language. The careful attention devoted to the general principles of homogenous reactions in the first chapter provides a firm basis for the subsequent chapters dealing with experimental methods for elucidating ohain mechctnisms, the chemical nature of the elementary processes involved in an JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
over-all chain mechanism, the mathematical treatment of chain reactions and finally chapters containing detailed aecounts of selected examples of spantaneously explosive reactions and addition polymerieation mechanisms. In the reviewer's minion Professor 1)aintou has rltwly realized his objectives of providi~.g str irrtrod.~etionto the subject for s t ~ d e n t sat the undergraduatc or postgraduate level, and a t the same time providing a stimulus to researchers in reaction kinetics and allied areas to delve further into the oriainalliterrtture on chain reactions. In short, chemists in all fields of kinetics, photochemistry, pyrolytic reactions, polymerization processes, explosions, etc., will find that "Chain Reactions" ia one of those hooks that iis a "must" in one's personal technical library. J. N. PITTS. JR. U~lVsRsl~ OF r
CALIBORNU
Rni~neros.C*LIGORNI*
VAN NOSTRANIYS SCIENTIFIC ENCYCLOPEDIA
aelected applications of qualitative DTA, theoretical background for quantitative DTA and its applications, and the use and correlation of DTA results. The laat chapter relates recent developments and applications up to the early part of 1957. To many, the great value of thia hook may lie in its four appendixes. The first lists over 1500 publications pertaining to DTA and dating from 1877 to early 1957. Appendix 2 lists over 250 DTA laboratories in the United States and abroad, giving many particulars on the equipment used in each. Appendix 3 is an index of operators of DTA equip ment throughout the world. The last appendix is an alphabetical reference list of materials studied by DTA with refcrences to their source in literature. The appendixes fill 290 of the 444 pages of the hook. The subject index of six pages completes the hook. This is a reference volume. It should be found in the libraries of all who have any need of differential thermal analysis. I t would be of little value to college chemistry departments, except perhaps in senior courses where special techniques of analysis are being studied. D. F. ARBENEAU
Third edition. D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc., Princeton, New Jersey, 1958. v i 1839 pp. 23 X 28.5 em. $30.
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THE third edition (previous editions 1938, 1947) of this comprehensive reference work retains the true character of an encyclopedia. Fifteen thousand terms are explained in 1839 pages. It covers all science and mathematics, both fund& mental and applied, from aeronautics to zoology. Milling, "the process of removing material by multitoothed rotating cutters" takes two pages. Enzymes, "soluble, colloidals, organic catalysts produced by living organisms. . ." is worth a two and a half page essay. "Nuclear reactors" is brought u p t o d a t e very well by six pages largely devoted to clear, instructive diagrams. The use of hold face for key words, uncrowded use of strueturd formulas and mathematical equations, and very adequate crass references should make this volume eagerly sought for it8 usefulnes8. W. F. K.
DIFFERENTIAL THERMAL ANALYSIS W. I. Smothers, Director of Ceramic Research, The Ohio Brass Co., and Yao Chiang, Research Associate in Colloids, Department of Chemistry, Ohio State University. Chemical Publishing CowInc. New York, 1958. 444 pp. 33 figs. 19 tables. 14.5 X 22 cm. $16. AUTKORSSmothers and Chiang here present one of the most complete works on differential thermal analysis (DTA) thus far published. This hook in a sense was begun in 1951 with. the publication of s. "Bibliography of Differential Thermal Analysis." Now, greatly enlarged and supplemented, thia volume consists of eight chapters containing origins of DTA, equipment, factors in qualitative DTA, VOLUME 35, NO. 11, NOVEMBER, 1958
X m m n J m m Coulmm ~ Sroanr, Nov* Bco~r*.C ~ x h n ~
CHEMISTRY OF THE STEROIDS Charles W. Shoppee, Professor of Organic Chemistry, University of Sydney. Academic Press Inc., New York, 1958. vii 314 pp. 27 tables. 14 X 22 cm. $9.
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THIS short hut faidy camprehenaive monograph attempts "to present as concisely as possible the present state of knowledge" of the chemistry of the steroids. Taking as a starting point the classical work of Professor and Mary Fieser ("Natural Products Related to Phenanthrene," 3rdedition) and dso by ahridging and adapting from his and his wife's more extensive chapters in Radd's "Chemistry of Carbon Compounds, Volume 116," pages 764-1049 (Elsevier, 1953), the author gives here only a brief outline of earlier structural investigations an the sterols and bile acids, "hut," to quote again from the Preface, "later structural investigations dealing with the sex harmones, the adrenocortical hormones, the cardiac glyoasides and aglycones, and sapogenins, are presented in full." In addition. various m e e t s of steroid n+
configurational assignments, are covered in the opening chapter. At appropriate points, in other parts of the book, "partial syntheses and total syntheses are also described as fully as is consistent with brevity." Within the soape of these aims, Professor Shoppee hsrr sssemhled his material admirably. Struotural formulas are expertly drawn, and all relevant features of atereochemistry are fully indicated. Designated with Arabic rather than
Roman numerals, the formulas are readily located and easily followed from the text. Although it is assumed that the reader has a g o d working knowledge of a rather wide variety of fundamental as well as more recent and specialized organic reactions, reagents, and terminology, this generous use of structural formulas makes it possible for the non-steroid chemist to use the book with relatively little difficulty. However, the approach throughout, often taken verbatim from the treatment in Rodd, is almost entirely descriptive, with appropriate emphasis on theoretiml implications and relationships an integral feature of only certain sections of the text. The result, in some chapters at least, almost approaches the style of Elsevier's "Encyclopaedia of Organic Chemistry" or even Chemical Abstracts. I n printing and format, the hook is well up to the publisher's excellent standards. Probably the only eeriously objeetionshle feature on this score is the showing of the Cn-me side-chain of ergosterol and related compounds as cis rather than Irans(pp.27,51ff.). The index, consisting almost exclusively of names of compounds, suffers mmewhat from the general omission of important name reactions and applications of specific and typical reaction sequences. Literature coverage is complete through 1955, with a few additional references to important papers which appeared in 1956. The hook, therefore, is a particularly valuable guide to the considerable body of more recent steroid chemistry which has been published in the years since 1948 when the latest edition of the Fieser monograph was sent to press. ALBERT W. BURGBTAHLER Uawensmr OF K m e ~ s L ~ a a s u o s I. t ~ w a * s
GMELINS HANDBUCH DER ANORGANISCHEN CHEMIE. SYSTEMATIC SUBJECT INDEX Edited by the Gmelin Institute under the diredion of E. H. E. Pietach. Eighth edition. Verlag Chemie, GmbH., W e b heim Bergstrasse, 1957. xiv 116 pp. 17.5 X 25.5 Em. $17.28.
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THIS small volume is the classification of subject matter in inorganic chemistry and related fields used by the Gmelin Handbook. The text is in German and English. As stated in the Preface, the "Index was originally prepared in order to serve as a classificrttipn guide for the Gmelin Institute's scientific archives. The terms were developed and periodically revised over a period of more than 30 years, in the course of the Gmelin Institute's work on the eighth edition of the Gmelin Handhook." The present veraion is suitable for mechanical documentation syetems in inorganic and physical chemistry and allied fields. The hook is available from the usual importers. JOAN W. CHITTUM Co~=manov W o o a ~ n a WOOSTEB.Oaro
