This innovative book from acclaimed educator Paula Bruice is organized in a way that discourages rote memorization. The author’s writing has been praised for anticipating readers' questions, and appeals to their need to learn visually and by solving problems. Emphasizing that learners should reason their way to solutions rather than memorize facts, Bruice encourages them to think about what they have learned previously and apply that knowledge in a new setting. KEY TOPICS The book balances coverage of traditional topics with bioorganic chemistry, highlights mechanistic similarities, and ties synthesis and reactivity together–teaching the reactivity of a functional group and the synthesis of compounds obtained as a result of that reactivity. For the study of organic chemistry.

About The Author

Paula Yurkanis Bruice was raised primarily in Massachusetts, Germany, and Switzerland and was graduated from the Girls' Latin School in Boston. She received an A.B. from Mount Holyoke College and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Virginia. She received an NIH postdoctoral fellowship for study in Biochemistry at the University of Virginia Medical School, and she held a postdoctoral appointment in the Department of Pharmacology at Yale Medical School.

She is a member of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she has received the Associated Students Teacher of the Year Award, the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, and two Mortar Board Professor of the Year Awards. Her research interests concern the mechanism and catalysis of organic reactions, particularly those of biological significance. Paula has a daughter and a son who are physicians and a son who is a lawyer. Her main hobbies are reading mystery/suspense novels and her pets (three dogs, two cats, and a parrot).

Reader Reviews
My assessment of this textbook is based upon concurrent usage of the solutions manual. Paula Bruice does a great job in presenting organic chemistry. I had virtually no knowledge of organic chemistry when starting the academic year, and felt I had a solid understanding of it at the end of the year. I obtained As both semesters, even though one of the professors only loosely followed the material in the text. However, the text was of sufficient quality that I was able to understand the material the professor presented by relying almost solely on the text. I prefer to learn things by reading and studying alone. I used this text with solutions manual almost exclusively. The author's presentation of subjects is logical and progressive. There are many worked problems within the text, and the solutions manual has fully worked solutions to the problems. Additionally, there are review subjects within the solutions manual to cover subjects that are not properly organic chemistry, but must be mastered to understand organic chemistry. The key to getting the most from this text is to work the problems at the end of the chapters. Paula Bruice does not present problems that were not covered in the chapter. Thus, if you read the chapter, you'll see the concepts in the problems at the end of the chapter. Where you have gaps in working the problems, you can readily fill the gaps by checking the solutions manual. Read the text, work the problems, you'll learn organic chemistry. As a final note, there is a web site to accompany the text. It isn't great, but I think most such web sites are deficient. Nevertheless, it was sometimes helpful when I simply couldn't grasp a concept. It is probably the best web site to accompany a text I've seen. Comment | | (Report this)

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