Principles of Modern Chemistry Description:

Principles of Modern Chemistry review:
5 stars (Great chemistry textbook for college freshmen) - Though many people would find this book distasteful, it is an extremely good source of information for both basic and intermediate chemistry. It is obviously not a book any student can handle, but with a good background in basic chemistry, the book will take the student a long way down the path of chemistry. The book uses colorful pictures and graphs to show the reader what the chemistry looks like in real life rather than just teaching the bare concept.



Chemistry is not about doing word problems; it is about actually seeing the results and learning to analyze these results. If you prefer to just get through chemistry and "learn" how to do problems without learning the real applications, choose another book. If you actually want to learn chemistry, this is the perfect book for you. As opposed to the average textbook that drags a subject matter on, this book is very concise and moves on after showing a derivation of an equation or one sample problem. Obviously this book may seem hard and seemingly impossible to comprehend at times, but a good recommendation is to get enough sleep before reading the book because it is much denser than other introduction to chemistry textbooks.
4 stars (Pretty Good) - I never actually used this book; I TAed for a class that used it. I ended up reading alot of it and thought that it was pretty good, but didn't cover all the math and derivations that were used in the course. Its a good book for basic general chemistry, but it does not explain the math very well. I also wouldn't reccommend it for students who have never taken chemistry at all because its probably too advanced. Take home message: its a more advanced general chem book, but fails miserably in explaining the math.
5 stars (excellent) - I have read the other reviews, but I think this is an excellent text for general chemistry (or introductory courses). The fundamentals are well-explained, and the core itself is easily comprehensible and detailed... a wonderful read.