Book Review pubs.acs.org/OPRD
March’s Advanced Organic Chemistry, 7th ed. Michael B. Smith. Wiley: New York, 2013. 2047 + xxv pp. £83.50. ISBN 987-0-470-46259-1. ood news! The seventh edition of “March’s” is now available. The bad news! It is even heavier than the sixth edition. Of course this means that the new edition has been rewritten and updated to include advances in organic chemistry in the period 2005−2010, with more than 5500 new references added. Why is this my preferred general text on organic chemistry? Because it covers the three topics of structure, reactions, and mechanisms in equal weight, and combines the readability necessary for a graduate teaching text, with the comprehensiveness required by researchers, with lots and lots of key references. Thus, it is my first call when I need to look up a new topic, or refresh my fading memory on an old subject. The new edition is over 2000 pages and contains indices which are over 400 pages. That might seem excessive to some, but to my mind, this is vital, since it allows the reader to use the work as a reference book to locate the precise topic more quickly than “Googling”. For those process chemists who do not know “March”, after the informative structural section the book is organised on reaction types, with chapters on each, such as electrophilic aromatic substitutions, radical substitutions, eliminations, rearrangements, etc; thus, the comprehensive index is needed to locate specific topics. However, the focus in Part II on mechanisms helps the reader to understand the chemistry, and for a process chemist, this is vital, since process understanding leads inevitably to process control and easier scale-up. So, in summary, this latest edition should be on the bookshelf of every organic chemist; but do not just use it as a reference book. Read it thoroughly, and it will give you lots of new ideas. No need, therefore, to “beware the Ide(a)s of March!!” Professor Smith has done a fantastic job over the past few years in updating this new editionhow he finds the time, along with writing other books, I do not know! No doubt he is already working on the eighth edition; I do hope so. In conclusion, this latest, mammoth edition of March/Smith is highly recommended. Buy it, but do strengthen your bookshelf to cope with the weight!
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Trevor Laird, Editor AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
© XXXX American Chemical Society
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dx.doi.org/10.1021/op400164x | Org. Process Res. Dev. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
