Paperback edition of Advances in Organometallic Chemistry, Vol. 39. Robert West and F. Gordon A. Stone, editors. Academic: New York, 1996. xi + 408 pp. Figs. and Tables. 14.6 x 22.9 cm. $65.00.

How long is a silicon-silicon double bond? Written at a level to which readers of this Journal are accustomed, West and Stone's compilation answers this question and many more, putting a degree of closure on a subject that has grown and matured over the last 25 years.

It is important for chemists to realize that true multiple bonds are not restricted to organic chemistry or transition metal-metal bonds in complexes, but have been well characterized and extensively studied throughout the boron, carbon, and nitrogen families (groups 13, 14, and 15) of the periodic table. As expected, the book places emphasis on silicon chemistry, with individual chapters devoted to Si=E, (E = Si, disilenes; C, silenes; N, iminosilanes; and P, As, phospha- and arsa-silenes). Other chapters cover double bonds in germanium and tin chemistry, boron-carbon multiple bonds, and multiple bonding involving heavier group 13 elements. Group 15 is represented in a chapter largely devoted to heterobenzenes C₅R₅E' (E' = N, P, As, Sb, Bi) complexed with iron in ferrocene fashion.

One might have been looking for an introductory chapter to provide a general overview of the book title subject, but no such chapter is present. However, sufficient diversity of material in the eight chapters is present. A minimal browse time of several hours will provide interesting reading and a great deal of knowledge about an important subject in modern chemistry. Chapter authors are indeed good, internal consistency is high, and the book is up to date, with many references through 1994 and a few into 1995.

Several textual quotations seem noteworthy in characterizing impact one might draw from this book. Adrian and Michael Brook state on page 151 that "...it is clear that the status of silenes [Si=C compounds] has changed from that of a rare oddity to a not uncommon occurrence". And Renji Okazaki and Robert West add on page 232 that "Disilene 1 [(Mes)₂Si=Si(Mes)₂, Mes is the mesityl group] has now become a common organometallic reagent." Truly impressive is the wealth of information about silicon bond multiplicity, once the "holy grail" of synthetic organometallic chemists. Fully 38 molecular structures containing a silicon-silicon double bond are listed in Table 1 (pp 234, 235). (By the way, the silicon-silicon average double bond length is 2.16 Å.) Their now routine preparations are described in Volume 29 (1992) of Inorganic Syntheses, mainly via photolysis of linear trisilanes.

While finding a specific piece of information (e.g., the tin-tin double-bond length) in a book of this sort might be a bit frustrating, I would still recommend West and Stone's opus as an informational storehouse of chemical reactions, syntheses, physical properties, structural characteristics, and spectroscopic data on a wide variety of main-group multiply bonded compounds. The floodgates of new information on the subject have seemingly closed, much as occurred in noble gas chemistry, but is still ongoing with transition metal-metal multiple bonding and with the fullerenes. An investment in West and Stone's work at this time thus appears to be a good one.