Student Textbook ReviewsThe project described below has been published in the Journal of Chemical Education.
"Uncensored and Uncut - Student Reviews of Six Mainstream Organic Texts"
Raymond P. Lutz and Carl C. Wamser, J. Chem. Educ., 2001, 78 (10), 1350-1354.
Student reviews of 6 textbooks
W. H. Brown & C. S. Foote, Organic Chemistry, 2nd ed., Saunders, 1998.
(the textbook that was in use in 1999-2000 when the project was carried out)F. A. Carey, Organic Chemistry, 4th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2000.
(the textbook now in use)S. N. Ege, Organic Chemistry: Structure and Reactivity, 4th ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
M. Jones, Jr., Organic Chemistry, 2nd ed., Norton, 2000.
T. W. G. Solomons & C. B. Fryhle, Organic Chemistry, 7th ed., Wiley, 2000.
L. G. Wade, Jr., Organic Chemistry, 4th ed., Prentice-Hall, 1999.
Four chapters were compared
Substitution and Elimination
Carboxyl Derivatives
Aromatic Substitution
Amines
Complete comments (uncensored and uncut) have been compiled for each textbook:
Comments were organized as much as feasible and appear, in order, as comments relating to the text itself, comments relating to a single chapter, comments relating to pairs of chapters, followed by comments that include references to Brown and Foote. There are many of the latter type of comments, because students were specifically asked to compare the reviewed texts with their own text, Brown and Foote. The segregation of comments that include an author as well as Brown and Foote may not be complete, and references to Brown and Foote can be found interspersed among the comments on the other texts.