JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
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ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
Lucius lunius Desha, Professor of Chemistry. Washington 8 Lee University. Second edition. McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., New Yo&, 1952. xvi 595 pp. Illustrated. 16 X 23.5 cm. $6.50. W m ~ a otexthook on organic chemistry is admittedly a very difficult task. In the preface to the second edition Professor Desha says that the book is plsnned to be the basis for a year course and is "designed partioularly for those students whose formal training in t,he subject will probably end with such s. course." With the wealth of material available since the publication of the first edition in 1936, this solution to the problem of what to include in a beginning textbook is proposed: "to abandon any thought of being comprehensive; to reappraise the entire subject matter, old and new, and select carefully the illustrative material to he used; and, having decided to mention a principle or a. product, t o treat it in enough detail to give it meaning. The basis of selection and the order of presentation must be, necessarily, somewhat arbitrary. That is part of the price to be paid for a &-a book which will give the beginning student a reasonable chance to avoid that sense of utter confusion whioh Wohler
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was experiencing in 1836 when he %-rote, 'Organic chemistry gives me the impression of a- primeval, tropics1 forest.. . a monstrous and boundless thicket, with no way of escape, into whioh one may well dread to enter.' " This reviewer has the feeling on looking over this text, that the student will still he confused, but that the nature of the forest has been changed. Emphasis is on mechanism of reaction, inductive effect, polarization, etc., a t the expense of the behavior of organic compounds. Interrelationships of compounds are understood better hy the average student from material presented in charts with references (first edition, page 144) rather than from a. list of references to other paragraphs in other chapters (second edition, page 121). Most authors and teachers find it more advantageous to consider the fats and fatty ails along with the fatty acids and other esters rather than as derivatives of polyfunctionai alcohols, and to consider aromatic compounds after considerable foundation material of naming and behavior has been built up by the study of simpler compounds. The topics chosen for discussion are handled well hut many teachers will disagree with the choice. Same inaccuracies have been overlooked; for example, on page 75 the statement is made that. "the structure which is common to all compounds classified
