Schaum's Easy Outline of Organic Chemistry

After reviewing my notes and the assigned chapters in my organic chemistry courses, these outlines were very useful in bringing everything together. Being able to review information in a new perspective really helps to elucidate on topics that may have been vaguely or ambiguously covered in a traditional text or lecture. You won't be able to learn organic chemistry using these outlines alone. The book is, however, an excellent study aid that I highly recommend. I have purchased other supplementary texts for organic chemistry, this one has been the most valuable. It is written in the perspective of someone teaching an organic chemistry course rather than that of chemist writing a reference guide - which cannot be said for a lot of the other material available.

I just finished organic 1, and I could NOT have made it through without THIS LITTLE GEM! We were assigned the WADE Organic book, which was not bad, the "hints" were useful, but who has time to read through those dense confusing chapters meticulously- it's too much talk when what you really need is the BIG PICTURE of what is going on! This book is a little POWERHOUSE-- it gives you the barebone rules and laws which you can easily read and memorize--over and over again! You can't do reactions without MEMORIZATION-- you need the clear-cut rules first before analyzing anything. Now, it's not perfect, (but what is?), some reactions are not mentioned, but combine this with your NOTES (take down EVERYTHING THE PROF. SAYS of course!) and you'll fill in all the gaps and be able to UNDERSTAND SN1, SN2, E2,E1 and all the fun alkene, alkane, alkyne reactions that will rapidly come your way! With this baby and your class notes, forget about reading those 1000+ pages of bulky verbose confusing textbooks! what a waste of time! Combine this with your notes and you will "get it"! I was able to make some KILLER clear-cut, one page - reaction charts just from this book! IF YOU NEED ORGO HELP, READ THIS BOOK OVER AND OVER AGAIN, (+your notes) & TRUST ME, YOU WILL GET IT!

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with this book. It contained a lot of general information as well as specific examples. To make the most out of the book, you need a pretty good understanding of organic chemistry to begin with. I used it after reading my own textbook, and then read this book to reemphasize the information. it helped me check my understanding of the material.