Organic Structural Spectroscopy

Rating:
Summary: BEWARE: Better Spectroscopy Texts are Available
Review: As a student using this as a primary text in a graduate-level spectroscopy course, I found that this first edition text is far from polished and does not surpass the spectroscopy texts curretly avaiable on the market. Errors were found in the text and end-of-chapter problems. The extreme scarcity of worked problems and review questions with answers made it difficult for a student to test his or her grasp of the concepts. There is no study guide. Furthermore, the problems at the end of the chapter often relate poorly to what was stated in the chapter's text. As a result of these shortcomings, I turned to other, more established spectroscopy texts for clearer descriptions and understandable examples. Perhaps later editions will improve upon the first; however, I would advise against buying this text and recommend a more established spectroscopy textbook.

Rating:
Summary: Among the better general organic spectroscopy books
Review: I teach the class this book is intended for: graduate level organic spectroscopy. It is a first edition, so there may be a glitch or two here and there, but I have been very pleased with it.

In my opinion, there are no ideal books out there. Either the background/theory is inadequate (e.g., Silverstein), the tables are hardly useful (e.g., Pavia), or there aren't enough problems. On the other extreme are NMR-only books like Gunther's or Schlichter that are beyond the scope of the course. While I personally would like to see more tables than are present in Lambert's book, they are a good start and will do very well for many people.

The book includes very reasonable introductions to a great variety of techniques. The section on ionization in mass spec, for instance, has subsections on LD, SIMS, FAB, MALDI, ESI, TS, and APCI on top of the usual EI and CI methods. In the optical spectroscopy section, there are good introductions to CD and ORD. The chapter on 2D NMR is also much more extensive than typical for these books.

There are 35 "integrated problems" in the back of the book, but I might like to have seen more problems associated with each chapter.

I assign this book with confidence, supplementing it with some tables and home grown problems. As far as I'm concerned, it's the class of the current (1999) lot.

Rating:
Summary: A so-so book...
Review: I took a class in organic spectroscopy this year (spring 1999) and this was the primary textbook. My professor skipped some of the chapters and handed out supplementary materials instead. I don't know what was the motive to choose it as a textbook, i guess because it covers all, although superficially. If you are looking for a book on the subject, I suggest finding a few older ones that concentrate on subjects instead of something that wants to be the Holy Grail of Spectroscopy.