Alternative energy sources, part A; Alternative...
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tremely informative beginning for agenerd ehemistrv text. The text is divided into six parts with two t o five chapters each. The titles of the parts reflect Stine's emphasis: Part I Nuclear and Radioehemistrv. .. 4 chapters; Part I1 Chemical Princioles: Review and Preview, 4 chapters; Part 111 Energy and Environment, 3 chapters; Part IV Agricultural Chemistry, 2 chapters; Part V Food, 5 chapters; Part VI Drugs: From Dental Health t o Mental Health (plus Birth Control), 5 chapters. Instructors using the text have considerahle freedom in selecting course content. Although there are 23 chapters, no one chapter requires more than 8 prerequisite chapters. As an aid, Stine includes a handy guide t o course organization in the preface. Stine does not just gloss over these topics. His treatment has substance, he does more than present a lot of relevant fluff and foam, an easy indictment of some texts for nonscience students. This text serves as a n excellent reference t o many products, processes, and technological issues of our day. The text is one which students are likely to keep as part of their personal libraries after completing the course. The second edition includes chapters on energy and detailed coverage of several environmental problems. For better or worse, depending on yourtaste in cartoons, the imaginative but funky illustrations of Chiros are absent from this edition. Because the teat is heavily applications oriented, its theoretical and analytical foundation is thin. While ionic bonds are described, they are never really defined. Three tables, one page of text, and one problem with 26 formulas constitute inorganic nomenclature. I t will not be necessary for students t o satisfy any significant mathematics prerequisite for a course using this text; the author only rarely does any computations. If you are looking for a text which will give students drill and practice in mole calculations, this is not it. Some instructors will find this brevity a shortcoming. But as stated right from the start, this brevity is intentional; Stine really has created an alternative. If Stine would strengthen and carefully integrate the missing theoretical and analytical materials, thereby increasing the text from 560 t o 800 pages, he would have one of the best selling general chemistry texts in America. As it is, it is a good book with perhaps a limited market. Actually the text has a hidden market that, 1 believe, the publisher and Stine have missed. In soliciting comments from my colleagues, one noted that one of his undergraduate advisees read and thoroughly enjoyed the text. If the text were required reading for undergraduate chemist w and biochemistnr ,msiors. , . I believe that we w d d hu\.e prodwcrl nn rxeellrnl, eiirrriw ~ Silm y lu coml,ar the crrll nll t c rc,mmon ver-ehloride-is-a-green-gas syndrome (Davenport, J. CHEM. EDUC.,47,271 (1970)). Robert S. Cichowski California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~
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Blosynthesis of Natural Products Paolo Manino, halsred Press, hew York. NY. 1981. 548 pp. Figs. and Iaoles. 23.5
Any author attempting to write an introductory text on the complex.discipline of biosvnthesis of natural oroducts is faced with the task of choosine between a suoerfieial account encomoassine the entire field and
cover not only the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites hut also to summarize the basics of cell biology, introductory level biochemistry, organic reaction mechanisms, stereochemistrv. .. and even olant taxonomv. While the aooendix on stereochemistw ,is eaoecinllv usefui'ta biologists, it would have been better t o have omitted some of these explanatory topics and in their place present in detail the hiosynthesis of other classes of natural products, especially including alkaloids, mustard oils, cyanogenic compounds, betalains, and additional classes of antibiotics. Also additional experimental techniques could have been included. Although specialists can readily find fault with the treatments given t o particular classes of compounds, we feel the chapters on polyketides, isoprenoids, steroids, shikimate-derived products, phenyl-propanoids, and flavonoids are satisfactorily developed for their intended audiences. Each of the l srrpn chapters cover rhr m t ~ o bialsynrhetic in r h pathway ~ fc,llwed hy \arioui\truct~ral 'I'ne mdifimtiona lo the d w v r d pr~~ductr. author includes same experimental evidence from the primary literature throughout the text and treats controversial subjects evenly. The references are sufficiently complete t o allow students access to considerable relevant oublished material. In wmmary, despire the lack of rowrape of wvrral ~tnpcrrtantilarirs d w m ~ r u u n d , . includui mndhl) alkaloi
