Chemical Education Today
book & media reviews
Two General Chemistry Textbooks:
Chemistry: The Central Science, 7th ed.
Theodore L. Brown, H. Eugene LeMay, Jr., and Bruce E.
Bursten. Prentice-Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997. xxxi
+ 991 pp + appendices. Figs. and Tables. 20.8 × 26.0 cm.
Chemistry & Chemical Reactivity, 3rd ed.
John C. Kotz and Paul Treichel, Jr. Saunders: Fort Worth,
TX, 1996. xxxii + 1121 pp + appendices. Figs. and tables.
22.4 × 26.2 cm.
The two textbooks discussed in this review are both
fine general chemistry texts, designed for mainline first-
year college courses. Adopters of either text will find them
complete, well written textbooks with clean, clear teaching
styles. Both books follow traditional general chemistry out-
lines, with traditional content. While applications are well
interwoven throughout both texts, neither should be viewed
as “applications oriented”. A brief comparison will follow
individual descriptions.
Chemistry, The Central Science, 7th ed., by Brown,
LeMay, and Bursten has a traditional chapter sequence. The
most distinctive content is an excellent chapter on materi-
als, which includes liquid crystals, polymers, and ceramics.
Descriptive inorganic, organic, and biochemistry are found
in the last chapters, with an “add-on” flavor. The authors
state the textbook’s advantages are clear writing, scientific
accuracy and currency, strong end-of-chapter problems, and
concept-oriented learning. I agree with these characteriza-
tions. Clear writing has long been a strength of this book,
and it certainly also includes the typical 100+ problems per
chapter. There is a real feel of “being current” about this
book—many features are chosen with this in mind, and re-
cent dates are pointedly shown. Topics like taxol, atomic force
microscopy, and buckyballs are examples. The content is pre-
sented clearly, with a straight science feel, and with a sense
of comprehensive treatment (both common approaches to
limiting reagents are fully developed). Visually, the look is
rather dense, with perhaps an excess of graphics per page (a
comment also made in the review of the prior edition, J.
Chem. Educ. 1995, 72, A107–A108). The overly dense appear-
ance also extends to the problem sections, which are only
rarely interrupted by diagrams or other graphics.
The Brown, Lemay, and Bursten text is accompanied
by several ancillaries of interest. One, “Experimenting with
the Internet, A Guide for Chemistry Students” by Thomas
Gardner, is a nice general introduction to the Internet, an-
swering questions like “What is FTP?” or “What is the TCP
stack?” Although chemical examples are used, the book is
only modestly useful. A demo of “Matter”, a CD-ROM de-
signed to support this text was also reviewed. The CD-ROM
is a lecture presentation aid only, and is not for student use.
It contains figures, lab demo videos, and some animations.
I found the visual quality to be marginal, with poor resolu-
tion and background colors. Finally, a WWW site is under
construction for this text (http://www.prenhall.com/
378 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 4 April 1997
brown/), which looks like a good resource. It includes nice
practice tests for student use, for example.
Chemistry & Chemical Reactivity, 3rd ed., by Kotz and
Treichel also has a standard chapter layout, but is orga-
nized into a nice superstructure of major topics—for ex-
ample, five chapters on structure and bonding, and seven
chapters on principles of reactivity (including rates, ther-
modynamics, equilibria). The organic chemistry chapter is
in the middle of the book, after the bonding section. The
stated goal of the authors is to convey the excitement of dis-
covery within chemistry. The text does this with chemical
puzzles to start and end each chapter, and also with some
emphasis on the people of chemistry. My primary criterion
when evaluating a text is clarity of writing, and this book
meets that criterion well. The concepts are clearly stated,
and the calculations are carefully presented. There is a clear
emphasis on concepts, with a special section of conceptual
questions in each end-of-chapter problem set. Visually, this
book is clean and clear. Graphics are common, but never to
the point of seeming too busy.
A single ancillary was reviewed with this text, the
Saunders Interactive General Chemistry CD-ROM by Kotz
and Vining. The CD-ROM is an exciting, full-fledged inter-
active learning tool, designed for use by students. The full
text of the textbook is present in PDF format, but that is
the least of the content. A complete Interactive Chemistry
program is included, which amounts to a fully realized mul-
timedia presentation of General Chemistry. Rather than
mimic the Kotz and Treichel text, it presents an indepen-
dent interactive learning experience covering the main con-
cepts of each chapter. While not every concept is presented,
about 80% of the main ideas in each chapter are included.
Animations such as depictions of the kinetic molecular
theory of gases related to Boyle’s law are very effective (see
and hear the change in frequency of gas molecules colliding
with the container wall as the volume is decreased). Prob-
lem-solving tutorials are included, as are many interactive
graphs and video demonstrations. The CD-ROM also in-
cludes CAChe Visualizer for Education, a molecular model-
ing program, complete with 300 predrawn structures and
various visualization tools. A basic graphic utility (“Mr.
Plot”) and a useful workbook for the CD-ROM are also in-
cluded. Using this CD-ROM, you truly realize the power of
multimedia to communicate visually and by sound. It is ex-
citing! You also realize that the CD-ROM does not replace
a printed text. Even though the full text is available on the
CD-ROM, the printed version is much more usable. This
CD-ROM product was clearly integrated into the textbook
development project from the beginning. For an early edi-
tion, it is amazingly mature. No problems were encountered
while using this edition (v. 2.2) with either Windows 95 or
Windows NT, and the visual appearance is excellent.
Finally, a few words of direct comparison. Overall, the
Brown, LeMay, and Bursten book has a serious-science,
denser feel in both content and style, while the Kotz and
Treichel book is more open and approachable, more conver-
sational. Both are solid, mainline general chemistry texts,
and both comprehensively covered all the specific topics I
went looking for. Both texts include about the same num-
ber of “boxed special topics”, although the Kotz and Treichel
book had longer write-ups on featured scientists. I recom-
 Chemical Education Today

edited by
Edward J. Walsh
Allegheny College
Meadville, PA 16335

mend both texts highly, with the Saunders Interactive Gen-

eral Chemistry CD-ROM available at extra cost with the
Kotz and Treichel book being a very successful, very useful
multimedia companion for general chemistry.

Jack Steehler
Department of Chemistry, Roanoke College, Salem,
VA 24153-3794; email: JSteehler@Roanoke.Edu

Introducing...
I am delighted to be able to announce the appointment of
two Associate Editors for the Book/Media Review section of this
Journal. They are Jeff Kovac, from the University of Tennessee,
and Mike McCallum, who is in Stockton, California, at the Uni-
versity of the Pacific. They have both written reviews for this sec-
tion and are guiding some other reviews through the process.
Jeff has strong commitment to chemical education and has
been writing about scientific ethics in this and other journals. He
is a physical chemist with special interests in statistical mechan-
ics and computer simulation.
Mike is also a physical chemist—you see, you need two
Jeffrey D. Kovac physical chemists to prop up one organic chemist—who has skills C. Michael McCallum
Department of Chemistry in supercomputing, an area in which he won a prize from IBM. Department of Chemistry
University of Tennessee University of the Pacific
Knoxville, TN 37996 E. J. Walsh 3601 Pacific Avenue
423/974-3444 Stockton, CA 95211
Email: jkovac@utk.edu 209/946-2393
Email: mmccallum@uop.edu

Vol. 74 No. 4 April 1997 • Journal of Chemical Education 379