Organic Chemistry Problem Solver

The Organic Chemistry Problem Solver is an excellent supplement for first-time students taking organic chemistry. If fact, in my opinion, it is the best at what it does -- provide students with much-needed guidance in their study of organic chemistry. It is also helpful as a review to students who are taking an upper-level course, even the first graduate course. It is more than a set of problems with their solutions, however. It is that, but it also provides a discussion of the approach to working a type of problem or to a general topic in organic chemistry -- stereochemistry, for example. The description of approache to the study and application of organic chemistry, detailed solutions, and accompanying discussions and descriptions are the strength of the book and is what makes it so valuable to the student. I would particularly reccommend it to a student who is in a course where the professor is not using a specific textbook or is not following the assigned textbook very closely, because many of the topics in a first-year organic course are described in enough detail to provide the background needed to understand most of the principles of the subject; it that sense, it acts a written tutor for the subject. Two characteristics are somewhat distracting, but they are minor: an older-looking font is used in the text (Courier ?) and the drawings and chemical structures (the extended structure of propane, for example) are crude in comparision to the slick drawings and structures found in today's chemistry textbooks. I would look past these, however, and get this book if I were taking a first-year course (or an intermediate or first-year graduate course). Used appropriately with the assigned texbook, it will be a great help with a time-consuming course that is considered to be very demanding to most students.