(Part 2) Best organic chemistry books according to redditors

I really love Principles and Applications of Organotransition Metal Chemistry, also known as "Collman and Hegedus"

It's a press release. It skimps out on a detailed enumeration of everything we do know about the chemistry and dynamics of atmospheric aerosols, which has been an active research area for 60 years now. The beginner in the field needs to slog through the 2000+ pages of Pruppacher and Klett, Seinfeld and Pandis, and Finlayson-Pitts and Pitts.

The only thing new with the CLOUD results is (a) molecular-level building block understanding of the precise nucleation pathway, confirming decades of previous bulk and stochastic experiments, and (b) the fact that IIN (the mechanism whereby GCRs could enhance aerosol formation) is pretty much irrelevant anytime you get trinary sulfate-nitrate-water nucleation occurring.

> EDIT: Not surprisingly, over in /r/science [sic] they jump to the conclusion that this is a confirmation of CAGW ClimateScienceTM rather than a demonstration of how little is actually understood (and therefore cannot even attempt to be "modeled").

The only one jumping to conclusions here is you and the parallel post on the front-page of this forum criticizing Mann's tweet. In reality, this paper is a death-knell for Svensmark's GCR-climate theory; the original Kirkby et al, 2011 paper is overruled with this new understanding since it moved towards the direction of more atmospherically-relevant aerosol loadings and illustrated how the one way that GCRs could affect aerosols and thereby clouds is irrelevant in the context of the free atmosphere.

And by the way, the entire point of this paper is that the authors developed a model which very well details their experimental results:

> Our experimental measurements are well reproduced by a dynamical model based on quantum chemical calculations of binding energies of molecular clusters, without any fitted parameters.

I found that Clayden was an excellent resource to learn organic chemistry and get an intuition/deeper understanding of why reactions proceed in the directions that they do. I did not find the typical textbooks that are used in classes, such as Organic Chemistry by Bruice to be nearly as useful, as the emphasis was on covering a wide range of reactions and not focusing on what they have in common.

I would not recommend one of the classic higher-level bibles, such as March's Advanced Organic Chemistry to you at this stage.

If you plan on continuing to study organic chemistry after this first course, I would recommend that you take a good course (or multiple courses) in physical organic chemistry. You will develop a much better understanding of reaction mechanisms and chemical kinetics if you do. Good texts for this field are Carey and Sundberg's Advanced Organic Chemistry Parts A and B, and Anslyn and Dougherty's Modern Physical Organic Chemistry.

Library genesis/libgen.io. I got the solutions manual for my version of organic chemistry by solomons on there last semester.

Edit: You seem to have a different organic chemistry book by Solomons though (for JEE...?). I had the regular 12 edition textbook so idk if the problems/solutions are the same.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Nuts-Bolts-Organic-Chemistry/dp/0805331174/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343183987&sr=8-1&keywords=nuts+and+bolts+of+organic+chemistry

I wish I had read this book before taking ochem.

Peter Syke's "Guidebook to Mechanism in Organic Chemistry" was an interesting read for me. After spending a year abroad doing Physical Chemistry research, I used this book to brush up on my Organic Chemistry Ninja skills. Amazon has it (of course), but it's a little pricey. I picked up a used copy a few years ago for pennies!

I think that Atkins' Molecules would fit the bill, but it's definitely not cheap.

Atkins' Molecules and Why Chemical Reactions Happen? are great reads, The latter requires A2 knowledge at least, but it's an interesting read, it introduces a few first year topics but you should be fine anyway. Atkins' Molecules is a much easier read and written so well, there's some pretty interesting molecules you'll encounter in the book as well.

There's also this textbook called A-level Chemistry by E.N. Ramsden, this textbook is pretty old most school libraries have it (my secondary school and 6th form both had it). I used it during A2 as a reference book and it has some really good questions if you want a proper challenge, only problem is that it doesn't have all the answers to the questions so you will have to go to your teacher (this is good anyway, you'll get a better UCAS ref) for the answers.

From which background are you asking this? Because from a chemistry point of view this seems like a silly question because the knowledge growths and changes each day.
From the perspective of an interested citizen with the goal of an broad education a single good general chemistry book like Zumdahl/Chemistry contains enough knowledge about chemistry for a lifetime.

If you want to build a doomsday proof bible of chemical knowledge or want to bolster your library as a scientist from another scientific branch like biology or physics you could alsocome quite close to capturing the most important knowledge. For this approach I would take the existing "bibles" for subtopics of chemistry like organic chemistry like Bruise/Organic Chemistry. I would at least take specific books from organic, inorganic, physical, analytical chemistry aswell as biochemistry. Most of these bibles have 1000+ pages so this "book" with 6000+ pages could maybe contain something like 50% of the knowledge about chemistry by todays standards.

This book sounds like what your looking for. Also, for more challenging problems check out Dave Evans' site for organic mechanism problems.

This book is excellent - great examples, clearly written and good progression.

Once you get to more advanced level, I would recommend supplementing with a copy of March -this is much more of a reference text than a book you would read, but very comprehensive http://www.amazon.com/Marchs-Advanced-Organic-Chemistry-Mechanisms/dp/0471585890

This is the only thing that helped me pass. It made everything so much easier to understand.

Organic Chemistry I as a Second Language: Translating the Basic Concepts

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470129298/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_py6QzbPQVSB5C

Organic chemistry 2 typically introduces many more reactions, but they don't really differ in terms of complexity. I would go over the old substitution and elimination reactions that you've learnt so far, but focus on why the reaction occurs where it does. The answer is often going to be at least one of:

• most acidic proton
  
  
• least steric hindrance
  
  
• most electron rich/poor
  
  
• a specific functional group
  
  I'd say the trickier thing that OC2 has plenty of is selectivity. For example, you might have two rather acidic protons, or two of the same functional group, but only one of them may react, and you need to justify why. Again, it goes back to the same basic criteria as before, just ranking one site differently from the other (e.g., maybe one functional group is a lot more hindered than the other one). But the concepts are all pretty much the same, so if you can understand why a reaction happens the way it does, then you've conquered a good chunk of the concepts. To help justify how a reaction works, maybe try taking the approach of explaining why a reaction doesn't happen elsewhere in the molecule.
  
  You'll have longer syntheses to deal with, but don't get intimidated, as they're just several reactions where the product of one reaction is the reactant for the next one. Since a reaction involves a main substrate (the key reactant), other reactants/reagents/conditions, and the product), the question might provide you with any two of those, and you'll need to determine the missing one, so maybe flip to an OC1 answer key and quickly cover up one of the questions without looking, and carefully reveal random parts of the question so you can try answering questions in different ways.
  
  This is a really good book for OC2, but it starts off at a reasonable level for someone who is good with the concepts of OC1. It may be worth checking out if your library has a copy.
  
  Edit: I also want to add on to not gloss over what makes something electron rich/poor, acidic, basic, et cetera. And remember to think in 3D, not getting stuck in the 2D paper world that OC is usually delivered in.

I used orgo cards to help study before tests. Otherwise they weren't as much help as making my own flash cards. I totally agree with generalCopper and SlothMold.


http://www.amazon.com/OrgoCards-Chemistry-Steven-Q-Wang/dp/0764175033/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299605871&sr=1-1

Organic Chemistry by Gorzynski Smith was fantastic. Filled with examples, explanations, color coded, diagrams, etc. It made a really difficult subject... Less difficult.

Two good books to have would be:

For Organic: March's.

For Inorganic: Cotton and Wilkinson.

Haven't actually worked out of them myself but I've heard good things about Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics by Seinfeld and Pandis or Introduction to Atmospheric Chemistry by Jacobs

https://www.amazon.com/Orgocards-Chemistry-Steven-Q-Wang/dp/0764175033/

https://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-SparkNotes-Study-Cards/dp/1411470052/

I have the Barron's ones, but the SparkNotes ones seem to be much cheaper...

> I know you said you have a book or something - PM me about that, I'm interested!

I've sent you a PM about the book. Glad to hear you're interested!

> What about this theory that floats around on the internet and that celebrities like Joe Rogan talk about that the pineal gland produces DMT, especially during sleep.

There is some evidence of DMT production in the pineal gland, but it's very scant at this stage. One study, last year (2013), showed trace amounts of DMT in the pineal glands of rats. This could mean that DMT is produced there, or somewhere else in the body and then stored/used there; however the amounts were far too limited to have any kind of psychedelic effect.

It's not extremely surprising, as DMT is chemically quite similar to the likes of serotonin and melatonin, so for it to form naturally in the brain isn't a huge jump biochemically speaking... it's also however not terribly interesting or useful until we know more about how much, when, why, and so on.

It could also however simply have been a freak occurrence. I'd like to see more studies being done to confirm it - especially with multiple species and animals of different ages (which may make a very large difference as well given the possible relationship between the pineal gland and the parietal eye that I mentioned).

> How did you learn as much as you know specifically about LSD?

It helps being old ;)

More seriously - I've simply read a lot and studied a lot with a critical mind. I'm a software developer professionally, but I've spent around 15 years of my free time learning and researching psychedelics and associated fields. I have no formal training, but I read university level textbooks on neuroscience, biochemistry, pharmacology and so on for fun.

Mostly, I'm just the kind of person that's both passionately curious about the world as well as being the kind of person that likes to critically analyse things. This helps to steer away from the mystical side of things (all very interesting, but lacking in anything even remotely similar to evidence) and keep me searching in more productive lines of enquiry.

> Any other books or references you'd be willing to share?

Hmmm... quite a lot.

"LSD" by Otto Snow is a good general purpose LSD book, with pretty detailed synthesis information that helps you understand the chemistry even if you're not actually planning on synthesising it yourself.

I'm not sure of your current level of skill, but if you need an intro, or refresher in to the basics of the right kind of chemistry, then Organic Chemistry I for Dummies is a great book according to my wife (who went from "no knowledge" to "able to at least understand what I'm talking about" just from this book).

For a "step-up" from there and getting to looking at the brain specifically, I'd start with (and continually go back to) Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience.

Aside from that, every research paper you can find dealing with related material. There's some good review papers as well for "summing up" a lot of others. One I really liked was "The Pharmacology of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: A Review" by Passie et al.

I also found some online courses to be really good. I recently did "Drugs and the Brain" on Coursera; it was definitely a good refresher for me, and would be excellent for anyone with a basic grounding but wanting to learn more in general. There's another on Coursera called "Medical Neuroscience", which I unfortunately missed, but will catch the next time around; and one coming up really soon titled "Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life" which I'll be doing but expect to be a somewhat simpler course than the others (I'll take it anyway - re-covering basics is always good because you do find things you've managed to miss no matter how long you've been learning).

Edit: One additional thing I should have mentioned... here on reddit, check out /r/drugnerds and maybe also /r/rationalpsychonaut

You could try Collman's book, http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Applications-Organotransition-Metal-Chemistry/dp/0935702512 that was sort of the classic for a long time, but of course it's missing the past 20 years or so of progress.

Hartwig's more recent text book http://www.amazon.com/Organotransition-Metal-Chemistry-Bonding-Catalysis/dp/189138953X/ is sort of supposed to be the successor to Collman's book but it's extremely dense and a bit hard to just sit down and read.

This book http://www.amazon.com/Synthesis-Organometallic-Compounds-Practical-Inorganic/dp/0471970700 could be fun for you if your library has it.

Another classic: http://www.amazon.com/Problems-Solutions-Organometallic-Chemistry-Kegley/dp/0935702237 that one's fun to go through.

In all cases if you find examples, etc that are interesting to you, go to the references and read the original paper!

I would also definitely recommend starting to follow relevant published research, the ACS journal "Organometallics" being an obvious starting point (http://pubs.acs.org/journal/orgnd7)

I used this to study for organic entrance exams going into grad school 2 years after I took organic. Just chug though every problem and make sure you understand each one.

Is this the one?

https://www.amazon.com/Student-Solutions-Manual-Organic-Chemistry-dp-1285052617/dp/1285052617/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

Don't pay that guy anything. Guarantee they don't even have the book anyway.

The textbook my organic chemistry class (undergrad) uses is the one by Bruice. It's pretty good at explaining the mechanisms and relevance of most things and it also has quite a lot of practice problems. There were a few things my professor would complain about like using bromomethane as a reagent at room temperature (which was him just being nit-picky), but it does well as a resource for organic chemistry.

My analytical class used the Harris book which seemed like a good resource. I only read through two of the chapters in it so I can't say much for the entire contents.

I have both books sitting in my room if anyone has any questions on them.

http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Edition-Paula-Bruice/dp/0321663136

also standard deviants deep fried organic chemistry for fun ;)

Well, it is a combination of organic chemistry (questions IV,V and VI) and inorganic chemistry (II). Question I is a basic chemistry question.

Question III is maybe inorganic, but could be thermodynamic as well. It depends on where you get the question. I have gotten similar questions in courses about thermodynamics and inorganic chemistry.

I'm not sure what basic books could be useful for you. For my bachelor I use the books organic chemistry and Physical chemistry. These books are quite advanced, I don't know if it helps you in anyway. But this is at least a start.

Sorry, couldn't find a book for inorganic chemistry. (don't know the writer and I can't get to my books unfortunately)

Good luck with learning chemistry!

I don't know how good/bad your textbook is, but I bought the solutions manual to mine. I did every single problem at the end of the chapters (we didn't have assigned written homework from the book, only some online thing), even the ones that I was sure I knew the answer to. I still have the 2-3 spiral notebooks I did all my problems in. I got an A in both.

This is the textbook I used for Organic Chemistry

Smith book?

Leroy book?

[I found this book helpful.] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Nuts-Bolts-Organic-Chemistry/dp/0805331174) Read through it before school starts

http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-I-For-Dummies/dp/0764569023/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1WP4MMA938E9S3K520QD

$3 - 9781118147399

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$3 - 978-1111827052

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$3 - 978-0134688640

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Looking for some easy to find textbooks - thanks in advance!!!

I just finished second semester O-Chem and my prof told me that I was one of her top students and that she expects me to ask her for a grad school letter. The key thing to Organic as a class is to keep up with the work. Don't procrastinate at all if you can help it. It is really the sort of course where you would not go wrong putting at least an hour a day of work in every single day whether that work be reading the chapter, doing problems, or doing a study group with friends.

So the real answer is consistently work on the material more or less all the time.

It really is not the hardest class I've ever taken nor the most deeply involved. It is a survey course with all the weaknesses that implies. There will be places where you would love to go into more depth, but can't because there is not enough time. It's simply a lot of information that you have to internalize in a small amount of time, not some fantastically difficult concepts that you have to break apart and derive every aspect of to see how people arrived at it.

Things that I have found helpful as review material and just being able to use an alternate source for the same stuff that is in the Solomons book?

• Pushing Electrons
  
• Organic Chemistry as a Second Language
  
• Khan Academy Organic videos
  
• Open Courseware notes from all over
  
  and of course once you are in the second semester or over the summer and you need to take the ACS organic exam as your final it is useful to work through the problems in the ACS exam prep book that they put out. What you learn in class should really go beyond the scope of that material, but the more you practice the better you'll feel about it.

https://www.amazon.com/Student-Solutions-Manual-Organic-Chemistry-dp-1285052617/dp/1285052617/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

This book: https://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-12th-Graham-Solomons-ebook/dp/B01DV7OEFK

This is what came with my class's textbook - if you bought the textbook. It's a pretty crappy kit, but it had one neat gimmick in that you could do a cyclohexane ring flip and have it show what happened to the various positions.

Another upside though, is that it's cheap.

this is a great little book for Getting to know the basics for an undergrad course.

Here's the ones recommended by Albizati:

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

You could settle for anything from Amazon though. They all practically do the same thing

According to this book, the Lucas test will produce heat upon reacting with an allyl alcohol, despite it being primary, due to the stability produced from the carbocation. So the Lucas test is conclusive, the melting temp (according to Chem Spider) is around 34 ^o C, and the NMR spectra is a total match

Systematic Identification of organic compounds It also talks about forming derivatives but remember when you start adding other functional groups everything goes to hell.

I particularly enjoyed "Molecular Orbitals and Organic Chemical Reactions" by Ian Fleming

It's not free but maybe you can find it in your library

https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Orbitals-Organic-Chemical-Reactions/dp/0470746599

This book explains very well how to construct molecular orbitals, starting with H2, "H4", Methane,...

these are some good books; when i was an undergrad the second semester one was really helpful; both as a second introduction of the material and as a good reference

http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Second-Language-Translating/dp/0470129298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310452151&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-II-Second-Language/dp/0471738085/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1310452151&sr=8-2

https://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Paula-Yurkanis-Bruice/dp/0321803221/

This was the book I used - just an earlier edition.

I think the book also has a lot to do with it. I (unfortunately) had to retake orgo after graduating from undergrad, and when I retook it, my class used a different book, and it made all the difference. In addition, a friend of mine just started taking orgo and she asked me if I had any advice: I told her to get this book in addition to her book. I kid you not, she called me today and said, "that book is fucking magical."

Here's the book.

Apparently its also on Scribd with the answer keys. Good luck!

Wow, I thought that language majors paid less for books than I do (science major). My most expensive yet was $250 for [Organic Chemistry] (http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Janice-Smith/dp/007340277X) with online access.

I can forgive it for new, expensive science, but jesus christ, a spanish book.

> organic chemistry book for .50

If it's this one, you can trade it in for $29.53 credit, free shipping. This one will net you $30.48. This one will net you $35.97. And this one will net you $39.87.

Always check www.amazon.com/tradein - you'll save on fees, shipping, and time.

With textbooks I would sell ASAP, because new editions come out every year or every few years.

Read this
Get a copy from your library.

Re-read this

Woodward-Hoffmann Rules