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Organic Chemistry [with MasteringChemistry & eText Access Code]

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Organised around functional groups, Wade's text is known for its student-oriented approach-incorporating problem solving help, orientation features, and complete discussions of mechanisms. He explains concepts without taking the unnecessary short cuts that often lead to misconceptions.

1320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1987

53 people are currently reading
623 people want to read

About the author

Leroy G. Wade Jr.

52 books5 followers

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5 stars
196 (45%)
4 stars
119 (27%)
3 stars
72 (16%)
2 stars
22 (5%)
1 star
19 (4%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
Profile Image for drew :).
459 reviews176 followers
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April 15, 2022
yes I’m counting this towards my reading goal because I deserve to get something out of all the pain & suffering I went through for orgo 1&2
Profile Image for Julie.
382 reviews9 followers
June 19, 2014
You bet I'm counting this in my books for this year. Over the last 9 months I've read this whole damn book! For a chemistry textbook, I actually found it pretty good. The descriptions of mechanisms are really good and the material is thoroughly explained. It's a challenging subject, but the book does a fine job helping you understand why things react the way they do. If you're needing to learn organic chemistry, I would recommend picking this up - along with a molecular model set and a good teacher. :)
Profile Image for Tina.
93 reviews13 followers
July 11, 2012
The book jumps around all over the place, and as far as Organic Chemistry goes its not really the best. most tests in the subject you will need to know step be step how each electron moves during a bonding reaction and this one poorly explains. Also the work problems they show you are overly simplified then you get to the end of chapter questions and its usually nothing like in the previous examples. The subject is hard but this book makes the subject even more so. If the book is your required text do not fret just go to Barnes and Nobles and browse around they usually have at least 5-6 books which will help walk you through the subject a hundred times better. Even the mcat prep book usually has a better written organic chemistry section.
Profile Image for Travis.
212 reviews42 followers
January 31, 2009
I had a fantastic teacher, and found this book to be like reading a big book of puzzles. Each chapter just introduces more rules of the game. I took the class years ago, and haven't been able to part with this book. Hmmm, but in reviewing my criteria for stars, though I had originally given this 4 stars, I realize I can't exactly recommend it to all my friends and family, so I had to lower it to 3.
Profile Image for Soothing Rays.
310 reviews46 followers
October 28, 2017
A prescribed book for my Chemistry Honours course.
...a delight to read as it is very simple to understand.
Profile Image for Ruthie Rolfsmeyer.
6 reviews
January 6, 2021
I had a pretty inexperienced O Chem teacher, but this book (the latest edition as of 2018) and a youtube channel called "Chad's Prep" (along with Khan Academy) got me through the year. It's one of the only text books I actually read cover to cover. It's O Chem, so it's pretty dry and boring, but the editors do what they can to make it helpful/engaging. I recommend the solutions manual too. I often used the copy at my local library.
13 reviews
January 20, 2021
A very difficult love story. With the main characters about some carbon guys and some side characters named oxygen and nitrogen and a few others. It is all about them bonding an breaking. It's like Geordie Shore!
Profile Image for Marie.
30 reviews6 followers
December 9, 2018
I wanted to cry more while reading this than a John Green book :/
8 reviews1 follower
April 22, 2021
It’s not the book, it’s the subject. I don’t enjoy chemistry and so this book was no fun to read. If you love chemistry, I’m sure it’s the book for you.
Profile Image for 3m Lop.
202 reviews1 follower
March 14, 2022
De los mejores libros de química para aprender, 100% recomendado ;)
Profile Image for Miguel.
33 reviews1 follower
July 26, 2023
Best textbook out there for OChem, the problem sets really have you understand the concepts. Highly used by Faculty in the School of Chemistry at the UNAM in Mexico.
Profile Image for Leandro Valdes.
9 reviews
June 6, 2024
I have just suffered with organic chemistry 1, 2, 3 and organic synthesis. Good book.
15 reviews
August 3, 2024
fr good explication pero por la química orgánica casi dejó la carrera 🤣🤣
Profile Image for Saylor Goforth.
18 reviews
April 15, 2025
Definitely a tear jerker for sure. Most stressful book I’ve ever read. Made me rethink everything about my life. Made me question my personhood.
Profile Image for Paul Mojaver.
76 reviews
December 12, 2025
Pretty good actually. Ofc outside resources were necessary---shoutout to chad's prep and pearson+ videos.
124 reviews3 followers
July 15, 2017
Fairly easy to follow and well organized. It really needs a glossary, and some of the mechanisms showed odd resonance structures, which always ended up with our professor explaining that while it might show this way in the text, he'd prefer if our cations/anions/radicals were in the most stable location in our quizzes. If a less stable resonance structure was involved in the reaction, we were to include both it and the more stable but unreactive form.
The appendices include an invaluable table of FTIR absorbtions, both as bars on a blank spectrum and a list of absorptions of various functional groups. Both go into much more detail than the text does, so were very helpful when annotating spectra for lab reports. A good example is the difference in aromatic absorptions based on their substituents' positions. Ortho, meta, para, and unsymmetrical substituents have characteristic absorptions that make identification much easier, particularly if you don't have an HNMR spectrum. This was especially helpful when dealing with more exotic products that aren't available in spectral databases and so can't be compared with references.
The online homework has issues, though they are much better than last year. Still, every chapter seemed to show with some issue that made our instructor bump back the due date so people had extra time to deal with the site. Frequently these involved the site not recognizing all the enantiomers of molecules, or needing either enantiomer but not both. Java only complicated this with endless updates, which required a new popup authorization after each (Java problems accounted for half of all the due date changes, at least). Of course this is only an issue if you have online homework.
The solutions manual for this is very well done, and works through every problem in the book in detail, when there's detail to be had. However, if you use the online homework, it includes problems not in the book and therefore not in the solutions manual. Most of the naming compounds are answers only, but there's only so much explaining you can do in naming a compound: "It has this many carbons with these branchings. The highest priority group is this. It's this enantiomer." All of this is easily determined by either the molecular structure or it's name, both of which you will have after looking at the answer in the manual.
Profile Image for Mike.
188 reviews19 followers
August 16, 2009
This is an excellent college-level organic chemistry text, and one that I've taught out of twice, but I would especially recommend it for chemistry majors - the level of detail is a bit much for biology majors who may not go on to do natural product synthesis. But the power of the detail and exposition is quite good, as are the problem sets and solutions manual.
Profile Image for Ryan Young.
2 reviews7 followers
September 23, 2013
The author managed to hook me in the first paragraph of the first chapter, and literally had me interested all the way to the last chapter. Loved it! Best organic text out there by far. (Trust me, I have three different texts.)

Uninteresting factoid: Fondren Library (Rice) has a signed copy.

Profile Image for Stella.
894 reviews351 followers
April 8, 2013
Like my fellow first year students, I am currently cramming for my finals. This textbook was well organized and provided great explanations to confusing concepts.

To me, this book could have used some more humour and real life analogies a la Psychology by Myers.

Profile Image for Terri.
313 reviews13 followers
October 14, 2009
As far as Organic Chemistry is concerned this book is good and the solution manual is awesome. That being said, organic chemistry is hard AS SHIT. Literally, the toughest class I've ever taken, so yeah, everything you've heard about how awful it is, it's true. Good luck!
Profile Image for Bill.
3 reviews1 follower
May 17, 2012
Captain Picard failed organic chemistry while he was a student at the Starfleet Academy so I couldn't complain more when I got a B+! This book is very helpful and provides enough details if you'd like to get involved in natural product synthesis.
Profile Image for AJ.
21 reviews
Read
October 14, 2015
This is the only textbook I've thoroughly read and worked from the first to the last page. It's pretentious to be shelving textbooks ("oh, this? Just a lazy afternoon beach read"), but I think this one deserves it.
3 reviews
January 6, 2009
Very good presentation of organic chemistry, City college, Brooklyn college and NYU uses this book. it is a 5/5 star book and is very detailed. It's also very cheap ranging from 1-7$.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews

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