Essential Organic Chemistry

by Paula Yurkanis Bruice

For one-term course in organic chemistry taken by pre-health profession majors. Designed for a one-term course, this organic chemistry text helps students see organic chemistry as an interesting and exciting science-and encourages the development of their critical-thinking skills. Bruice presents reactions with enough detail to give students a solid understanding of reactivity, rather than rote memorization. Once students understand the reasons behind the reactivity of organic compounds, they will be better prepared to understand the reactions involved in such areas as metabolism, PCR, and genetic engineering. The Second Edition has been revised throughout to make the material more accessible for students.

Genres: Chemistry, Textbooks

624 pages, Paperback

First published July 25, 2005

Reviews

[Jamie Connolly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t normally review textbooks but I made an exception for this one. It’s so well done. Comprehensive and, most important, logical in its progression with no gaps of understanding. So often, especially in science books, there is oversight of certain elements needed to fully understand the material. Not in this book at all. A hard subject, well-explained, made easy to understand. Only someone with extremely high understanding could explain something like this in simple terms. I even emailed the author I was so impressed. And for someone like me, who isn’t enrolled in any college and has no professor to contact, a book like this is perfect. 5 stars.

[Cristina R · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a more advanced book. For what I needed it was a bit too much, it goes into detail on different functional groups and how they interact and so on. You have to have a good grasp of chemistry before picking this up. Throughout the book I had different exercises to practice and that was wonderful but to get the solutions you have to buy a different workbook. I found that annoying. I would stick with Chemistry 3. It's more detailed and explains concepts better.

[Melissa Kidd · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a necessary book. It wasn't bad but a little dry. I can't imagine any book on chemistry would be anything but dry for me. Not sure what else to say about it than that. Not very many pictures, lots of reaction problems.