The author of this substantial text (500+ pages) is well known to organic chemists in his role as director of the Institut für Organische Chemie of the Technische Universität Braunschweig in Germany, and, with over 300 publications to his name, many of them in the subject area covered by this book, he obviously has the required expertise to write a definitive book on the subject.

I can now also say that Professor Hopf has certainly lived up to expectations, as he has put together what can only be described as a superb description of developments past and present in the fascinating area of hydrocarbon synthesis.

As Foreword author Professor Von Eggers Doering points out, the challenge of synthesizing compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen ("archetypes unadorned by perturbing elements," as he calls them) have always represented a special challenge for synthetic organic chemists, and the synthesis of these 'unnatural' products has provided answers to many a theoretical question or controversy when the solution could not be found within the myriad of structures provided by Nature. As he also suggests, chemists seeking to tackle a new hydrocarbon structure may also face the additional challenge of not even knowing if their 'back of an envelope' target will even exist as an isolable species, unlike the natural products, of whose existence we can be assured, even if we cannot compete in ingenuity with Nature to make them in a test tube. For this reason also hydrocarbons have long been of interest as intellectually satisfying challenges.

To Professor Hopf has fallen the task of organizing the various classes of hydrocarbons into intellectually coherent groups for his discussion of the many notable successes (and failures too) of the chemists who have risen to the challenge of making these molecules. As his Preface indicates, neither the industrially important hydrocarbons (the simple petroleum derived alkanes/alkenes/alkynes and aromatics) nor, with some exceptions, are the 'reactive' hydrocarbons (radicals, diradicals and carbenes) covered in the book (although the Preface's Reference section points the interested reader to several recent volumes covering these topics).

The first chapter, the one with the longest title ('From Simple Building Blocks to Complex Target Molecules and Multifaceted Reactions') contains the key to understanding the logic of the distribution of the subject in the different chapters. After a simple explanation of the logic of the Aufbau Prinzip, the author guides us through the construction of increasingly complex structures using only the three basic building blocks available to the hydrocarbon chemist, the sp3-, sp2- and sp-hybridized carbon atoms.

The chapter also sets the tone for the style of the book, with elegantly written and easy to read sentences complemented with excellent and well laid out schemes, attractively distinguished from the main text by the use of a coloured background. The References section that completes this and the other chapters could also be held up as an example to other authors, with up-to-date citations interspersed with fine notes and clarifications that make them a worthy read in their own right.

The 14 chapters that follow maintain these high standards with successive descriptions of the successful (or not so successful) syntheses of 'Adamantane and other Cage Hydrocarbons', 'The Prismanes', 'The Platonic Hydrocarbons' (a personal favourite, with a superb recount of the synthesis of dodecahedrane, "the Mt. Everest of hydrocarbon chemistry" in the author's words), 'Bridgehead-distorted Hydrocarbons', 'Alkenes, Alkynes, Allenes and Cumulenes', 'The Annulenes', 'Cross-Conjugated and Related Hydrocarbons', 'Non-Planar Aromatic Compounds', 'Three-dimensional Oligoolefins', two chapters dedicated to 'Extended Systems' ('From Benzene to Graphite Substructures' and 'Beyond the PAH Pattern') and finally 'Classics in Hydrocarbon Synthesis — Three Examples from Physical Organic Chemistry'.

Within each chapter one finds additional subdivisions (for example, the discussion of 'Adamantane and other Cage Hydrocarbons' covers the title compound, followed by its 'Higher Analogs, Twistane and Tetraasterane', while the final 'Classics in Hydrocarbon Synthesis' section talks about the dehydrobenzenes, non-Kekulé hydrocarbons and bond fixation in benzene rings).

Throughout these chapters one finds the usual excellent illustrations, with structures, reagents and yields clearly  illustrated in the style preferred by synthetic chemists. These schemes are, as far as I could tell, remarkably error free and, as a welcome bonus to the reader, they have been placed, inasmuch as possible, within the text in such a fashion that for the most part, the figures and the text describing their contents are on the same page, which greatly facilitates following the flow of the chapters.

The book is completed with excellent Author and Subject Indexes. I found the inclusion in the latter of material mentioned in the Reference sections of each Chapter an excellent idea. Finally, at a time when the poor standards of publishers of technical texts has been so often bemoaned by readers, the editor(s) and publisher of this volume certainly deserve praise for providing a superb, error free compilation of text and figures.

In summary, this is a must have book for anyone interested in hydrocarbon chemistry. The author's target audience is primarily the non-specialist in the area, a more general readership interested in the developments in the field over the last half century or so, but 'experts' in the field will also welcome the wealth of information and background provided. Hopefully the fact that this is a paperback with a reasonable price will make it also accessible to students (I was pleased to note while researching this review that the book is already listed as recommended reading on academic Web pages on both sides of the Atlantic). I have no doubts whatsoever that Professor Hopf's Classics in Hydrocarbon Chemistry is well on its way to deservedly becoming a classic among scientific books.

Derek J. McPhee
18 September 2001