Advanced Practical Organic Chemistry by J. Leonard, B. Lygo and G. Procter, and Advanced Practical Inorganic and Metalorganic Chemistry, by R. J. Errington

Reviewed by
Dave Berry
Chemistry Department, University of Victoria Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
berryde@uvvm.uvic.ca

Advanced Practical Organic Chemistry, 2nd Edition; by J. Leonard, B. Lygo, and G. Procter; Blackie Academic & Professional/ Chapman & Hall: 1995. Advanced Practical Inorganic and Metalorganic Chemistry; by R. J. Errington; Blackie Academic & Professional/ Chapman & Hall: 1997.

This review was intended to cover the inorganic and metalorganic textbook, but since this text parallels the organic text so closely, it is helpful to discuss them both. This will hopefully appeal to the average schizophrenic organometallic chemist, who sits in one camp or another - if not both - on a daily basis!

How did I get through graduate school without the aid of one - it would not have mattered which - of these text books? The answer is that I had a lot of experienced co-workers to guide me. Not every student has that resource, and these books pack a wealth of experience and advice into their pages. They are written in a sufficiently chatty style to encourage one to read on. Indeed, they could become bedside companions (perhaps I am not getting out enough these days!). Once read, they should be kept at hand because the tables contain useful reference material such as the properties of common solvents and including suitable drying agents, NMR shifts, and boiling points. The diagrams are also first-class, and a copy presented to the glassblower will require very little embellishment to permit the generation of a useful piece of equipment.

The organic book works through a logical sequence of safety, record keeping, equipment, drying solvents, reagents, gases, vacuum pumps, reaction procedures, work-up, purification, small and large scale reactions, characterization, and use of the chemical literature. The inorganic-metalorganic text closely parallels this sequence, with a naturally greater emphasis on glove-box and high-vacuum techniques and (perhaps disappointingly) less of an emphasis on chromatography. It does include a little more detail on spectroscopy and a useful index of preparations for starting materials. Frequently, where I have found a topic covered in less depth in one book, the other has filled the gap admirably. If I were to find any limitation, it would be the lack of a table of 2-D NMR experiments that summarizes the information that can be gleaned from each experiment.

Points that I particularly enjoyed in John Errington's book included the many safety tips that were mentioned, and that these were mentioned more than once. This recognizes the fact that the book will be used as a reference and that the reader might well miss points not cross-referenced. The diagrams and detailed accompanying explanations of the more complicated pieces of laboratory equipment help the reader understand the warnings and advice for appropriate use. I must confess that I felt suitably admonished when I read that one should "never succumb to the temptation to be lazy and pump volatiles directly into the main cold trap in the line!"

The high quality of both of these books lies in the personal style in which they are written. The tone is more that of a wiser laboratory partner lending some personal experiences than a dictatorial list of commandments. The editing is of the same high standard. I recommend either or both books to the beginning graduate student or perhaps the richer senior undergraduate. It would be nice to have a slightly thinner (but cheaper) version for the bulk of the undergraduate population. Both books retail in Canada for about CDN$70, but with the recent fluctuation on the foreign currency market, that is probably archaic information. Fortunately the contents of the books will not date as quickly!