Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews
edited by
Edward J. Walsh Allegheny College Meadville, PA 16335
Organic Chemistry: A Short Course, 10th edition Harold Hart, Leslie E. Craine, and David J. Hart. Houghton Mifflin: Boston, MA, 1999. 573 pp. ISBN 0-395-90225-8. Hard cover $81.00.
This 10th edition continues a succession of winners. The preface tells us that this text has been used “by hundreds of thousands of students in the United States and worldwide, via numerous translations”. Why such success? Teachers and others planning organic chemistry courses find that these editions treat competently the topics they want to teach. In this 10th edition, text is allocated as follows: 33% to principles of bonding, stereochemistry, and kinetics, including the chemistry of hydrocarbons; 31% to the chemistry of principal functional groups; 6% to physical methods for structure determination; 9% to heterocycles and polymers; and 21% to the chemistry of major biomolecule classes (lipids, carbohydrates, proteins and nucleic acids). As I said in my 1953 review of the first edition, “The style of writing is fast-moving and somewhat abrupt” (Bunnett, J. F. J. Chem. Educ. 1953, 30, 375). For many students, the terseness in treatment of principles is little problem, for most of these principles are also taught in elementary courses. I cheer the chapters on heterocycles and polymers, for major classes of biomolecules are polymers containing heterocyclic moieties of high biological significance. The chapter on carbohydrates indicates the character of the book. Substantial attention is given to stereoisomerism, to formation of cyclic hemiacetals, to alkylation and acylation reactions, to reduction and oxidation of the aldehyde functionality, and to formation and structures of glycosides, including oligosaccharides and polysaccharides. Omitted, however, are the formation of osazones, the Kiliani synthesis, and degradation reactions of classical carbohydrate chemistry. Here and there are essays on applications of organic chemistry or topics of special interest, such as fullerenes and the chlorofluorocarbons–ozone layer problem. They are inserted in appropriate chapters, in a special format. Although they may well sustain student interest, some teachers might prefer the space to be used to elaborate on mainline topics. Thus, one can argue that understanding of pH and buffers is so important in biological sciences that treatment of acid dissociation equilibria and dissociation constants (done well in this text) should be followed by attention to pH and buffers (not done). So, the book is not perfect, but it is a very good one, and has a good future. Joseph F. Bunnett Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of California Santa Cruz, CA 95064
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 76 No. 10 October 1999 • Journal of Chemical Education
1341
