Part I is a super summary of what one hopes the students get from earlier courses covering Thermodynamics, Structure, Kinetics, Mechanism, and Stereochemistry. The authors have successfully highlighted the important factors in less than 200 pages.

Part II covers a lot of new ground for most students, and they benefit from the crisp writing that focuses on what is really useful in synthesis. The emphasis is on range and categorizing. At the end of a chapter; e.g., the Base catalyzed carbon-carbon bond chapter, the students will have been exposed to all of the principal methods with some understanding of how they fit into the overall scheme of syntheses. On the other hand, they will not have been exposed to reaction conditions, yields, or references. It is a textbook in the classical sense and not a reference book.

The third edition of Principles of Organic Synthesis incorporates several significant changes from the earlier edition. The most important of these is the inclusion of an excellent new chapter on organo-transition metal chemistry. Other chapters in the book have been updated to reflect new synthetic methods. The authors have pruned the Part I chapters to keep the overall text about the same size as the previous edition. Additionally, a change in font makes the new edition much easier to read.

The new edition includes very extensive cross referencing of reactions among the chapters. This will serve a very valuable pedagogy. On the other hand, the deletion of chapter ending "Further Reading" suggestions in the new edition is unfortunate.

The textbook is suitable for an upper-level undergraduate course. The treatment serves as a good bridge from the introductory first course to a graduate-level course in synthesis. There is an opportunity for students to sort out the interrelationships of chemical reactions that is missed in the typical rapid-fire functional-group sophomore year course. Clearly, a graduate-level course in synthesis requires reaction conditions, yields, and literature references.