John Buckingham

A history of chemistry from the point of view of organic chemistry rather than the more usual inorganic.
I found this frustrating for the usual reasons --- too much history, not enough chemistry, and the history part of chemistry is such a freaking mess, one idiotic idea after another.

There were, however, two interesting chemistry points I picked up.

The first is the statement that the chemicals of organic chemistry consist of essentially an inert hydrocarbon backbone to which are attached various reactive groups that behave in specific ways. I've long complained about the way that chemical textbooks appear to refuse to print wide-ranging statements of chemistry that summarize the subject. This is precisely the kind of statement
I wish I'd see more of in chemistry texts. It may not always be true, but it at least provides a way for one to start to organize the material in one's mind.

The second interesting point was the claim that rings with alternating double and single bonds are stable when the number of double-single units is odd (eg benzene with 3, and benzene analogs with 5 or 7), but not when they are even. I've never heard this claim before, but I hope I see a discussion of this when I get to reading some molecular physics.… (mais)