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The Way of Synthesis is a 1000-page book on the progress of synthetic organic chemistry spanning its apparent inception in 1828 (Wohler’s preparation of urea) to the state of the art in 2007. It contains intriguing schemes and figures including a table of problems that were unsolved in 1975 and examples of how researchers are approaching them in 2007. The introductory section summarizes milestones within the contexts of structure elucidation, total synthesis, and methodology. A time line is provided for benchmark achievements in the area of total synthesis.
Chapter two is a rich, fairly comprehensive section on strategies and tactics and how they aid in brevity of a synthetic scheme. Umpolung reagents, ring juncture stereocontrol, functional group compatibility, ring expansion, and contraction represent a smattering of what is contained in these pages.
Chapters three through five consist of 700 pages of well-chosen synthetic schemes that reflect classic achievements in terpene, alkaloid, and miscellaneous target total synthesis from triquinanes to taxol to reserpine and strychnine. The chapters are interlaid with notes and personal recollections from contributors. Each synthetic scheme contains key strategy and key tactics analysis (highlighted in blue) in the page margins that are easy to correlate with reaction schemes.
Throughout the book, but particularly in chapter six, the authors offer a pragmatic evaluation of the state of the field in terms of ethics and practices. I am happy to put this book on my shelf and recommend it to all in the field from student to practitioner.
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