Gerhard Quinkert Ernst Egert Christian Griesinger Aspects of Organic Chemistry Structure Praise for the German Edition This up-to-date picture of organic chemistry presented in a rather unconventional fashion is well-founded yet fascinating. One really feels the enthusiasm of the authors for this exciting area, and it easily springs over onto the reader. Surely, I would have studied organic chemistry, if I had had such a book during my course. Richard R. Ernst This is the documentation of an extraordinary, future-oriented educational concept for organic chemistry. Albert Eschenmoser Being a beneficiary of Aspects of Organic Chemistry by Quinkert, Egert, and Griesinger, I want to point out that this book is an excellent source of information yet a gripping reading matter, not only for advanced students, but also for chemists more advanced in years. Vladimir Prelog The series has good chance to become such a standard work for organic chemists as Lectures on Physics (Feynman, Leighton, Sands) has been for the physics students since the last two generations passing a change in paradigms, which is essential for science itself, onto the education. The logical structure of organic chemistry is elucidated in a really uniquely conclusive way. Crossing the borders is considered not an exception, but the rule, no matter, whether links to topology, group or graph theories are discussed, or connections between chemistry and biology are worked out. Indeed, the basic concept of the authors to emphasize the close relationship between modern biology and chemistry is proved convincingly as a thread running through the whole text. This is not and wants not to be a lowbrow text. It is not a conventional textbook as you can find them on the market more than enough. It is a work made to help think about organic chemistry, to understand its logical structure, without neglecting the numerous important details. Helmut Schwarz

Table of Contents:
Introduction in organic chemistry; the structural model of classical organic chemistry; optical activity, chirality, and symmetry of molecules; configurational analysis (demonstrated using carbohydrates examples); conformational analysis (demonstrated using steroid examples); macromolecular and supramolocular chemistry; the qualitative MO model; documentation and retrieval of chemical knowledge; symmetry point groups and space groups; determination of absolute configuration; NMR-spectroscopy; the special case of benzene; base-pairing in biology; and chemistry.