However, when pressed to be more precise, I could never decide whether what I was doing was better described as coordination or organometallic chemistry. I was synthesising palladium and platinum compounds of sterically demanding tertiary phosphines, and then allowing, or forcing, these bound ligands to undergo cyclometallation, thereby forming direct metal-carbon bonds. That confusion of mine has been alleviated, finally, after about 15 years. I always had a sneaky suspicion that I was entangling myself in mounds of split hair. Thus, a broad holistic approach is used to present a very large accumulation of reductionist data and information.
Details become only details, and yet precision is maintained throughout.
He has mapped all this onto a generalised interaction matrix, reproduced on a wall chart, for which this book essentially becomes a guide, or instruction manual. Lewis acids and bases are classified by their frontier molecular orbital topology and are placed in a grid, such that 24 different types of bonding interaction can be immediately recognised. For example, ionic bond formation is seen as one type of Lewis acid-base interaction. Overall, Leach's writing is crisp, and, although dense with facts and information, this book is simple enough for secondary school students. All terms are defined along the way, and are further delineated in an excellent glossary of terms and symbols.