Voyages in Conceptual Chemistry

This is an awesome, awesome book. The professor who was teaching Freshman Chemistry at my school about 7-8 years ago ordered copies of this to put in the bookstore as 'optional' reading. I was already a junior at the time, but I knew my knowledge of some of the typical freshman chem topics was limited. Because the price wasn't too high, I bought it. After working even a few of the problems, I'd already learned a lot. The big problem with many 200-level Freshman chem courses is that they often are no more than exercises in calculator keypunching. The professor rarely does an adequate job explaining the "real world" significance of topics like kinetics, etc. and just expects the students to get all they need by working problems from the textbook. THIS book does NOT require use of a calculator! It makes you think about the concepts behind the material...the problems are usually tough, and they aren't for chickens. You have to explore many of them and spend time looking more deeply into the concepts. If you're not a pre-med, biochem, or chem major, I kinda doubt you'd enjoy or appreciate this book - but if you want a resource to help you learn the stuff at a higher level, this is a good one to use. I wish more freshman chem textbooks had this kind of material. GOOD JOB, MR. BAROUCH!! And there's a good Foreword by prizewinning and respected chemist Dudley Hershbach.

As a scientist who wrote numerous papers in inorganic and colloidal chemistry I find this book very stimulating as well as very clever. I wish to see more textbooks becoming "brainy" instead of plain cook-books---This should be left to F. Farmer for cooking.