Best organic chemistry text book?

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Auron

Auron

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I'm taking organic 2 in the spring and our text is "organic chemistry" by william H brown. I used wade for the 1st semester over a year ago and no longer have that text. I've read mostly negative comments on brown's book, so I'm questioning whether I should buy it.

The prof will give HW problems out of the book but will not be taken for a grade, so with this in mind - does it matter what book I use for the class? Anyone else use a book other than the one assigned for organic 2?
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The organic chemistry textbook I used in undergrad was called "Organic Chemsitry" and was written by Francis Carey. I was very satisfied with the way Carey presented the subject and found the book significantly useful in my studies. I would highly recommend it, however obviously you should make a sure a friend or colleague is willing to fill you in on the assigned problems from the other book. Best of luck to you in organic chem.
 
Orange12 said:
The organic chemistry textbook I used in undergrad was called "Organic Chemsitry" and was written by Francis Carey. I was very satisfied with the way Carey presented the subject and found the book significantly useful in my studies. I would highly recommend it, however obviously you should make a sure a friend or colleague is willing to fill you in on the assigned problems from the other book. Best of luck to you in organic chem.
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I agree. This book is great. I used it over the summer for 2nd semester o. chem and it made concepts easy to understand.

P.S. I think Brown book is a piece of crap too. I used it for 1st semester.
 
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damn lol...I just bought the brown book. I thought it would be more trouble than its worth using a different book due to homework etc. Oh well, I'll see how it is when it arrives.
 
I used Bruice, and I think it was a very good book.
 
I used Carey as well. Well, really my professor used Carey and I just took notes from him. But same thing.
 
"Organic Chemistry" by LG Wade is incredible. The 5th edition is great. Simple explanations, like they're explaining it to a 5 year old.
 
I use Organic Chemistry: Structure and Reactivity, written by a prof at my university, Ege. I have found it to be very good. Although the practice questions do not really reflect exam material.
 
they r all the same, just study the chapter review and connect the dots. worked for me!
 
We use the textbook by Jones. Its not a bad textbook, but I dont really like the way things are presented. In its favor though, it comes with tons of practice problems, and a solutions manual explaining how each one is solved.
 
WADE was really good! One of the few books I never sold back.
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Voldhardt and Schore. I know they use it Davis, and I imagine they use it at Berkeley, too. Volhardt is a professor at Berkeley and Schore is at Davis. The impression I got is that this is a very widely used book in the U.S.

That being said, I used the book and I wasn't really impressed. For some reason I just don't like the way things are presented. I know my notes are very different from the book.
 
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dontwakeme said:
I use Organic Chemistry: Structure and Reactivity, written by a prof at my university, Ege. I have found it to be very good. Although the practice questions do not really reflect exam material.
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Really, our school uses Ege, and the professor I had told us it was terrible and other students and myself agreed. I just think the material was presented in a confusing and disorganized fashion. The professor told us that the required text had been decided by the department, not him, and that we should refer to other books instead. I used Wade and was satisfied with that.
 
Wade, 6th Edition was the one I used, and boy did it get me through ochem (other than doing problems like mad, of course). I used Wade's book as my primary source in writing the ochem section for http://www.hsref.org/sciref
 
I just bought "Organic Chemistry" by Hornback (2nd ed.) Anyone used this one? The bookstore price at my school is over $200; I got it on half.com for about $100 :D:D:D
 
Hornback is amazing. THe textbook is very minimalist so its easy on the eyes. Materials are great for Ochem1, decent for Ochem2. The best thing about Hornback is that the book always felt manageable, which is always good when you're cramming.
 
I'm currently using Carey for Organic 2, and I would definitely recommend it. It's well written and has good practice problems.
 
tten said:
Really, our school uses Ege, and the professor I had told us it was terrible and other students and myself agreed. I just think the material was presented in a confusing and disorganized fashion. The professor told us that the required text had been decided by the department, not him, and that we should refer to other books instead. I used Wade and was satisfied with that.
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well my university's chemistry department seems to think otherwise. It got me through orgo just fine.

Regardless, most of what helped me in orgo came from my professor, not the book. If your professor is good, you can get away with just taking really great notes. My school has a "coursepack" that is filled with hundreds of past exam questions, which is great for practice as well.
 
Clayden, Greeves et al. Organic Chemistry. The best all inclusive book you will ever find for undergrad. I am in love with this book. Its terrifyingly thick and heavy-fifteen hundred pages-, and the thinnest of all pages with a rather small font, but that just means that there is a lot of information in this behemoth. And its all organized and assembled expertly. I would strongly suggest it.


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198503466/organischeche-20

Cheers
Piyush.
 
Wade 6th Edition, Hands Down!
 
I'm planning on using Organic Chemistry as a Second Language to supplement the required text, Wade, 6th edition. I've heard it really helps.
 
Spin said:
I'm planning on using Organic Chemistry as a Second Language to supplement the required text, Wade, 6th edition. I've heard it really helps.
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The book is okay, at best. The guy who wrote it actually taught me organic chemistry at Hopkins; he's a great teacher but not so much of a book writer.

My suggestion for you ochem students out there is to do problems until you drop. This is what I tell all my tutees and it hasn't failed yet. :)
 
I've used two, and of the two I liked the one written by McMurray the best.
 
Wade all the way. I went through Organic last year with his textbook, and it is just great. On the other hand, as Organic SI this year, we used Carey's edition, and it really seemed to me that some of the chapters are out of order...
 
Cataract said:
"Organic Chemistry" by LG Wade is incredible. The 5th edition is great. Simple explanations, like they're explaining it to a 5 year old.
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I agree... this book helped me out a bit as well... DON'T get the vollhardt (sp) book... it's just plain horrible!
 
Uncle John's "Organic" Bathroom Reader.
 
the only "good" orgo book is an invisible orgo book...
 
Get Klein's Orgo as a Second Language - they have them for both semesters. It is HUGELY helpful in understanding the material and getting over the proverbial orgo hump. You know what I mean: the point where studying orgo almost magically switches from pulling teeth to just learning new information. This books shortens the time it takes to get over that hump.
 
el aye said:
I've used two, and of the two I liked the one written by McMurray the best.
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i also used mcmurray. it's pretty decent. i also used second language by klein, it's also decent. for ochem though, you can only have decent or bad, never good, great or spectacular. :hardy:
 
gujuDoc said:
My old ochm professor always used to say Wade was the best.

We used a book by a guy named Dr. Solomon before. He was an old USF professor but everyone hated his bok. The professors always ripped into it due to mistakes so thy'd tell us to look up the Wade book in the librar. finally, after I was done with ochem they changed it over to the Wade book officially.

Its supposedly a good book for ochem.
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I'll second that Solomon's book is utter garbage. ( I mean to give you an idea he gives a in chapter problem in chapter 12 that you can't solve until you read chapter 14. Who proof read that piece of excrement?)
 
Dave_D said:
I'll second that Solomon's book is utter garbage. ( I mean to give you an idea he gives a in chapter problem in chapter 12 that you can't solve until you read chapter 14. Who proof read that piece of excrement?)
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Jones does that sometimes.

He will ask a question, but tell you that the mechanism you will probably propose, or whatever seems right, and was accepted for many years, but in chapter X, you will see why its wrong.

Edit: I actually enjoy that, because it lets us see how organic chemistry developed.
 
ocwaveoc said:
Organic chemistry by Janice Gorzynski Smith is a really good book. She really makes O chem logical and understandable. It's just been approved for use at Ohio State among numerous schools across the country.
Here's the link to her book on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemi...bs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198045970&sr=8-2
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That book frustrated me. It was so dense and took so long to extract the main points of the passages. On the other hand, it was very detailed and logical like you said. I stand by my Wade though.
 
Isoprop said:
i also used mcmurray. it's pretty decent. i also used second language by klein, it's also decent. for ochem though, you can only have decent or bad, never good, great or spectacular. :hardy:
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Yes there is, Claydon, Greeves et al, Organic Chemistry, is spectacular. Its unlike other textbooks used in universities. Its mechanism based rather than reaction based. Make a good text book cause after using that textbook, one can solve all reactions, without ever having to have dealt with that reaction in the past. This is so cause the textbook teaches the way reactions occur by nature's rules, and then one just has to think how nature would have done the rxn


Cheers
Piyush.
 
Back in my days (the 70's) this book was the bomb. Simply the best textbook I ever used for any course.

When it explained enantiomers it stated "everything has a mirror image except a vampire"
 
BlackSails said:
Jones does that sometimes.

He will ask a question, but tell you that the mechanism you will probably propose, or whatever seems right, and was accepted for many years, but in chapter X, you will see why its wrong.

Edit: I actually enjoy that, because it lets us see how organic chemistry developed.
Click to expand...

Well that's not quite what I was thinking of. One of the questions in chapter 12 was about aromatic compounds. However the whole concept of aromatic compounds wasn't introduced until chapter 14 so it made solving it difficult. (I only knew about it because at the time I had read ahead 2 chapters before trying any of the chapter problems.)
 
I used Carey- and it worked well for Orgo 2 (didn't get much from it during Orgo 1 but I think that was a prof fault not Carey)... if you were to use it I highly recommend buying the student solutions manual that goes with the book- it saved my butt!!!
 
There is no substitution for Wade. The textbook + solutions manual = :love:
 
Piyush said:
Yes there is, Claydon, Greeves et al, Organic Chemistry, is spectacular. Its unlike other textbooks used in universities. Its mechanism based rather than reaction based. Make a good text book cause after using that textbook, one can solve all reactions, without ever having to have dealt with that reaction in the past. This is so cause the textbook teaches the way reactions occur by nature's rules, and then one just has to think how nature would have done the rxn


Cheers
Piyush.
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sorry, but by DEFINITION, no ochem book can be spectacular. my webster defines organic chemistry as "the antithesis of spectacular. See BIOCHEMISTRY."

:laugh:
 
nowanmd said:
Back in my days (the 70's) this book was the bomb. Simply the best textbook I ever used for any course.

When it explained enantiomers it stated "everything has a mirror image except a vampire"
Click to expand...

i remember my ochem book (McMurray) explained E/Z isomers like this: E is on the EPPOSITE side, Z is for the ZAME zide. geez, i'll never forget that.
 
DescentFan said:
The book is okay, at best. The guy who wrote it actually taught me organic chemistry at Hopkins; he's a great teacher but not so much of a book writer.

My suggestion for you ochem students out there is to do problems until you drop. This is what I tell all my tutees and it hasn't failed yet. :)
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"The book is okay, at best. The guy who wrote it actually taught me organic chemistry at Hopkins; he's a great teacher but not so much of a book writer." <------ I'd definitely agree with this! :laugh:
 
ocwaveoc said:
Organic chemistry by Janice Gorzynski Smith is a really good book. She really makes O chem logical and understandable. It's just been approved for use at Ohio State among numerous schools across the country.
Here's the link to her book on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemi...bs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198045970&sr=8-2
Click to expand...



This book was AMAZING. Full explanation of everything, tons of examples w/reasons why this is the right answer. Also, answer manual has every end of chapter question.
 
I go to carnegie mellon university and we use Voldhardt and Schore
 
I loved my McMurry book. Get it and the solutions manual, do all the problems in the back of the chapters, and you'll never have problems with Orgo.
 
ocwaveoc said:
Organic chemistry by Janice Gorzynski Smith is a really good book. She really makes O chem logical and understandable. It's just been approved for use at Ohio State among numerous schools across the country.
Here's the link to her book on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemi...bs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198045970&sr=8-2
Click to expand...

I learned organic chemistry from this book and I honestly believe it is top notch for first timers learning organic chemistry. I have seen many other books including Wade, Brown, and they are just not as clear and precise as Smith.
 
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