Which ochem text do you guys use?

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byeh2004

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We use McMurry 4th Ed
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Wade is the best, hands-down.
 
UMich has a textbook written specifically for the curriculum (Ege) and it is very well-written and easy to read; it's a real textbook for teaching rather than reference material. I'm not sure how comprehensive it is, though.
 
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We used McMurry, I think the 5th edition but I know they now use the 6th ed.
 
Paula Bruice 4th ed

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Here at Berkeley, they force us to use Vollhardt and Schore's Organic Chemistry (since Vollhardt is an assistant dean of chemistry here). No one likes using the text since the prose and format are convoluted.

Study groups help in this case. 😉
 
L.G. Wade's Organic Chemistry (a lot of thought went into the title).

In another time, in another dimension, it is okay to love an organic chemistry textbook...for me this one is my true love.
 
ucla = brown and foote
 
i used ege, i think now ucsd uses volhardt
 
ditto on solomons. i dont really crack it that often though, my professor gives amazing notes. the end of the chapter questions and solutions manual are good though.
 
Orthodoc40 said:
We used Solomons, too. Its excellent!
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We used Solomons at UMass but personally, I thought it was terrible. I thought he often was way to wordy when he could have just said "Really this is concept x from previous chapter y page z." I really thought he tended to stress things that were either unimportant or repeated sections. (I mean how many times did he have to show hydration of alcohols?) Of course I made the most of it by trying to recognize the concepts, writing what I was thinking in the margins, and then seeing if the last sentence basically said "Yeah, it's that old concept."

Oh and there's the problem where he expected you to understand and use a concept before he introduced it.(Literally, there's definitely one problem in the grignard section where you can't solve it without reading ahead a few chapters.)
 
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McMurry's 5th for both semesters. I liked it a lot, I thought it was simplified and explained things well. Right after I finished organic the prof. switched to Paula Bruice's black book, i've heard good things about that one ( of course coming from ppl who hated mcmurry).
 
Dave_D said:
We used Solomons at UMass but personally, I thought it was terrible. I thought he often was way to wordy when he could have just said "Really this is concept x from previous chapter y page z." I really thought he tended to stress things that were either unimportant or repeated sections. (I mean how many times did he have to show hydration of alcohols?) Of course I made the most of it by trying to recognize the concepts, writing what I was thinking in the margins, and then seeing if the last sentence basically said "Yeah, it's that old concept."

Oh and there's the problem where he expected you to understand and use a concept before he introduced it.(Literally, there's definitely one problem in the grignard section where you can't solve it without reading ahead a few chapters.)
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8th edition? I thought it made everything very easy to understand & follow. Mind you, I took organic chemistry in one of the summer intensive sessions - so it was all organic, all the time. I had been worried about organic & understanding & keeping up, but found it incredibly easy, largely but not entirely due to the text we used.
 
byeh2004 said:
We use McMurry 4th Ed
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I have Wade 6th Ed. which kicks ass, but you could get by just fine - and much cheaper - by going with the 5th Ed.
 
Orthodoc40 said:
8th edition? I thought it made everything very easy to understand & follow. Mind you, I took organic chemistry in one of the summer intensive sessions - so it was all organic, all the time. I had been worried about organic & understanding & keeping up, but found it incredibly easy, largely but not entirely due to the text we used.
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Yes, that's the one we used too. I HATED that book. I found that he prattled on and on about stuff that was either A:Completely unimportant or B:Stuff we had already seen so it was easy for me to miss the new stuff that I was supposed to be learning buried in all of that.(It gets really noticible about chapter 11 since so much of it is application of the previous chapters.) I mean look at the NMR which I think is chapter 9. The whole point was so we could look at a NMR graph and figure out chemical structure. Did knowing what a NMR machine actually did help me understand the read out at all? No way, it was just noise. I honestly felt like using that book was like mining, dredging through tons of ore to get the few nuggets of knowledge that I was actually interested in.(What's really sad is that the prof in the discussion section told us in 10 minutes the 3 things that are important to understand in reading NMR. That being the position of the peak, peak splitting, and least important area under a peak. No, it didn't help me to know that magnetic fields from the atoms and electons cause that. My knowledge of sub atomic physics isn't good enough for that info to result in the concept that benzenes show up shifted left.)

Like I've said I found alot of repeated info where I wish he'd just refer back instead of re-explaining the same damn thing. Oh, and how did Solomons ever expect anyone to know grignard re-agents react to cyclopentadiene the way it does if they hadn't learned about aromatic compounds? (I believe that's a question in chapter 12 but if you haven't read 14 or 15 you would have no idea why the hydrogen that gets attacked is that one.)

Hell, I haven't even started about how he screwed up Huckel numbers.(Lets see, he explains how to generate Huckel numbers which is nice but really, I want to know if a given number is a Huckel number. All you had to do is take your number, divide by 2 and if the result was odd it's a Huckel number.) Then there's the Sodar calculation which he definitely makes way more complex.(Since it turns out there's an equation to figure it out. Yes, some of us like algebra.) I guess next time I should spew venom on Solomons absolutely idiotic explaination of what a nucleophile is or the most idiotic rule in chemistry, IE Markovnikov's rule.(Which is SO stupid I can't believe any chemist would actually state it in the class room unless he had brain damage.)
 
Nikki2002 said:
The BEST: Francis Carey

The absolute worst: ege
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finally someone said francis carey! i forgot what my book was until you said it....that's what UConn uses......and i believe Ohio State does as well since my friend once asked me a question and we both had the same book.....the purple edition!

stupid o chem
 
Francis Carey here too.
I thought it was great as far as organic books go.

I used the purple edition but the new one is out now. I might buy it just to see if anything is different .... j/k
 
Nikki2002 said:
The absolute worst: ege
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I don't care to defend it, since I've never used another text, but could you elaborate on why you think so?
 
Nikki2002 said:
The BEST: Francis Carey

The absolute worst: ege
Click to expand...

I'm taking organic I next semester, and we're supposed to buy Carey's 6th edition. I did a search online, and found that there's a US hardcover 6th edition, and an international hardcover 6th edition (also in English), that costs about half as much. The seller says that they have the same content, but I don't know if I can trust him/her. Has anyone used the international version, and was it the same?
 
Hands down, the best is Bruice. The explanations are crystal clear, and the practice problems are good.
 
Jon Davis said:
Hands down, the best is Bruice. The explanations are crystal clear, and the practice problems are good.
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right on! 👍 👍
 
colorado_doc_2B said:
I'm taking organic I next semester, and we're supposed to buy Carey's 6th edition. I did a search online, and found that there's a US hardcover 6th edition, and an international hardcover 6th edition (also in English), that costs about half as much. The seller says that they have the same content, but I don't know if I can trust him/her. Has anyone used the international version, and was it the same?
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my freind bought a calc book that was the international edition and it had the same exact stuff as the U.S. one. The only difference was the intl one wasnt hardcover like the U.S. So i geuss they are the same, but i wouldnt know for sure. Heck one of my freinds for o chem had the intl bruice book, it was the same as our one except it was softcover.
 
I used Bruice also, pretty good book and nice pictures
 
Bruice all the way, and keep it for biochem!
 
colorado_doc_2B said:
I'm taking organic I next semester, and we're supposed to buy Carey's 6th edition. I did a search online, and found that there's a US hardcover 6th edition, and an international hardcover 6th edition (also in English), that costs about half as much. The seller says that they have the same content, but I don't know if I can trust him/her. Has anyone used the international version, and was it the same?
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the only difference between the 5th and 6th editions is that in the new edition they made the font bigger and changed the cover. You can just go ahead and buy the 5th edition book and study guide, unless you prefer the new edition which just looks prettier. I have examined both and they have the same content.
 
We used McMurry 6th ed. It's pretty watered down though (may even be related to the dummy's book series 🙂 ), so if you're looking for something more substantative - look elsewhere.
 
colorado_doc_2B said:
I'm taking organic I next semester, and we're supposed to buy Carey's 6th edition. I did a search online, and found that there's a US hardcover 6th edition, and an international hardcover 6th edition (also in English), that costs about half as much. The seller says that they have the same content, but I don't know if I can trust him/her. Has anyone used the international version, and was it the same?
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I think your question had more to do with the US 6th ed. and the Int. 6th ed. rather than the last response saying to go ahead with the 5th ed.

But I faced this dilemma with the 5th ed. The only difference for the 5th ed. was the inside cover and back flap. You will probably be missing out on a periodic table and several tables describing common organic compounds in table form (names, mol. weight, bp trends, sol.) stuff like that. I would go ahead with the international ed. and find a buddy to copy that table and charts because they are useful for quick reference if the 6th ed. has the same differences.
 
BUMP

My class starting in the fall is using the 6th edition of Wade's Organic Chemistry. I have the 4th edition, along with the solutions manual... can I get by?

I don't really want to shell out another $140 if it's mostly the same text

(Although, I must say, as far as textbooks go, Wade's O-chem is DEFINITELY a keeper. I had no love for gen chem... yet for some reason, reading Wade's text is so doable and even interesting. I can work through all the in-text problems and end-of-chapter problems on my own with the manual... it's definitely good practice.)
 
McMurry, 6th ed. It's pretty good.
 
ghostchild said:
Francis Carey here too.
I thought it was great as far as organic books go.

I used the purple edition but the new one is out now. I might buy it just to see if anything is different .... j/k
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using it too. I like it.

They have easy to understand explanations plus tables that show all the reactions that particular compounds undergo.

IMO, 👍👍
 
ahaydt said:
Volhardt and Schore's, 4th Ed. I think its a good text, helped me a lot. Some of the diagrams for mechanisms are a bit lacking, but overall I found it helpful.
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What undergrad did/do you go to? Volhardt was my prof and he wrote me a LOR. 🙂
 
Loudon 4th Ed.

Iverson's a funny guy, I sat in on one of his lectures.
 
Stony Brook just switched from Bruice to Brown, Foote, & Iverson.
 
We used "Organic Chemistry" by Clayden, Greeves, Warren, and Wothers in BU's Intensive Organic Chemistry course. It's a big thick book (> 6 lbs), but it does a great job of helping you understand orgo logically. Much better than brute memorization.
 
I think Loudon 4th edition is one of the best Ochem book because i read it...twice🙂
 
colorado_doc_2B said:
I'm taking organic I next semester, and we're supposed to buy Carey's 6th edition. I did a search online, and found that there's a US hardcover 6th edition, and an international hardcover 6th edition (also in English), that costs about half as much. The seller says that they have the same content, but I don't know if I can trust him/her. Has anyone used the international version, and was it the same?
Click to expand...

I have an international book for Biochem (since it was $100 cheaper than what the bookstore is selling it for). Mine says it's not supposed to be sold outside of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and all the photos are in black and white.

I have a Carrey 6th edition... Seems no one on facebook wants it, though... sad day.

And our lab book was written by two professors that teach at our school. That was sold back to the bookstore very quickly.
 
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