Organic Chemistry (with Organic ChemistryNOW) (Available Titles Owl)
Hornback will serve the average students well and also be an excellent foundation for further exploration by more advanced students. Overall the writing style is concise and focused, helping the students stay focused on the most important concepts of the chapter with out becoming lost in details and distractions."I share the author's view that the mechanistic approach is really the only good way to teach the material. I also support the author's focus on major mechanistic classes, while not covering less important classes of reactions."The end-of-chapter problems as well as the problems within the chapters are excellent. Many questions work students through the necessary fundamentals. Only thereafter are more sophisticated problems introduced."Hornback's mechanistic organization is only different from our current approach in that we cover the functional groups as the major topic of most chapters. But our underlying approach is basically mechanistic. Therefore using Hornback would not present any significant challenges."I prefer this mechanistic approach as it is the only realistic way to avoid rote memorization by students of the volume of material presented and it exposes them to the inherent logic of the discipline.