Inorganic Chemistry: Principles of Structure and Reactivity (4th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: great book
Review: Although I didn't read much about it, I still got an A from this course. Hopefully the professor won't see this page.:-)
If you ever need to know anything about inorganic chemistry of today, buy this book. It's almost a dictionary for inorg-chemists.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best introductory inorganic textbooks around
Review: I bought this book on the recommendation of one of my chemistry advisors. I must say, it is one of the best books available on the market for inorganic chemistry. The chapters on bonding, solid state, and coordination are very well done, but the authors have done a good job on the rest as well. They don't try to gloss over anything and provide references for further reading. I used this book as background for an inorganic synthesis project; I am using it for a one-semester inorganic class now (the book was designed for a two-semester class), and I will use it again when I take a higher class in inorganic chemistry.

Rating:
Summary: A comprehensive guide for Inorganic Chemistry
Review: This book is a fantastic approach for Inorganic Chemistry! Far from the usual descriptive inorganic chemistry found in other books, Huheey's work is a complete and thorough guide to undergraduate students; it explains important subjects which are left out in other works.

The chapters about bonding are specially well written and have good information that can be well understood by chemistry students.

There is only one little flaw, its lack of colored pictures. It may seem silly, but some students can be greatly encouraged by this.

It is a great book and I recomend it to anyone who plans to partake an Inorganic Chemistry course.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive, but not complete
Review: This book was used in a class I nearly took in college; while I couldn't fit the course into my schedule, I kept the book.

What the book does, it does well: for example, its coverage of the noble gases is quite extensive. It also does an excellent job covering acid/base chemistry, going into far more detail than any book I had seen to that point (although its approach tended to be descriptive and qualitative rather than quantitative).

That said, there are some significant gaps in the book: for example, while there is a chapter on the halogens and noble gases, there are no corresponding chapters for the other element groups (though that doesn't mean they aren't treated).

The biggest flaw in this book, though, is the woefully inadequate index: there are many, many things that should be listed, but aren't. For example, the book uses a certain type of diagram in three different chapters. Only the second and third instances, though, are listed in the index; the first time, where the diagrams are actually explained, is not listed at all. Similarly, there are very few entries for the elements themselves: there are no entries *at all* for hydrogen, iodine, copper, or calcium, just to name four.

All in all, it's still a very good book, but it's by no means perfect (or the only book of its kind). Large sections of the book are written at a relatively advanced level, so I certainly wouldn't recommend this for someone who hasn't had a significant chemistry background, but I would recommend it for someone trying to build a reference library.