Q&A Approach to Organic Chemistry

Professor Michael B. Smith was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1946 and moved to Madison Heights, Virginia in 1957, where he attended high school at Amherst County High School. He received an A.A. from Ferrum College in 1967 and a B.S. in chemistry from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1969. After working for three years at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. in Newport News VA as an analytical chemist, he entered graduate school at Purdue University. He received a Ph.D. in Organic chemistry in 1977, under the auspices of Professor Joe Wolinsky. Professor Smith spent one year as a faculty research associate at the Arizona State University with Professor G. Robert Pettit, working on the isolation of cytotoxic principles from plants and sponges. He spent a second year of postdoctoral work with Professor Sidney M. Hecht at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working on the synthesis of bleomycin A2.Professor Smith began his academic career at the University of Connecticut in 1979, where he achieved the rank of professor of chemistry. In 1986 he spent a sabbatical leave in the laboratories of Professor Leon Ghosez, at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, as a visiting professor. He retired as a full professor from the University of Connecticut on January 1, 2017, and is currently pursuing his interests as an author.

There are many organic chemistry textbooks on the market, adopting a range of approaches. This volume by Smith (emer., Univ. of Connecticut) is organized around a series of leading questions to provide students with a supplementary resource for studying organic chemistry. As explained in the preface, the volume represents an update of an earlier work published by HarperCollins (in1993 and 2006), intended for use as a study guide alongside an organic chemistry textbook. The current volume is likewise suggested as a supplement. The text follows the outline of textbooks that present organic chemistry in terms of a functional group approach. Such familiar organizational structure will help students find their way in this text. Uniquely, rather than presenting topics and subtopics discursively within the text, the chapters immediately move to leading questions, as in a pre-exam review. Thus, students might have to hunt a little through the table of contents and each section to find the relevant questions they might need to review. The index should be helpful for such a scenario, as it is organized using a keywords approach. The book will be useful for undergraduate newcomers to organic chemistry, students of the discipline reviewing for professional or graduate school exams, and as a unique reference resource for academic libraries.--P. W. Baures, Keene State CollegeSumming Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates.

• Preface. Common Abbreviations. Author. Part A A Q&A Approach to Organic Chemistry. 1 Orbitals and Bonding. 2 Structure of Molecules. 3 Acids and Bases. 4 Alkanes, Isomers, and Nomenclature. 5 Conformations. 6 Stereochemistry. 7 Alkenes and Alkynes: Structure, Nomenclature, and Reactions. 8 Alkyl Halides and Substitution Reactions. 9 Elimination Reactions. 10 Organometallic Compounds. 11 Spectroscopy. 12 Aldehydes and Ketones. Acyl Addition Reactions. Part B A Q&A Approach to Organic Chemistry. 13 Oxidation Reactions. 14 Reduction Reactions. 15 Carboxylic Acids, Carboxylic Acid Derivatives, and Acyl Substitution Reactions. 16 Benzene, Aromaticity, and Benzene Derivatives. 17 Enolate Anions and Condensation Reactions. 18 Conjugation and Reactions of Conjugated Compounds. 19 Amines. 20 Amino Acids, Peptides, and Proteins. 21 Carbohydrates and Nucleic Acids. Appendix: Answers to End of Chapter Problems. Index.