I am seriously considering trying to make a change in career and make a run at attending med school. One of my big obstacles is that I need to go back and pick up a couple of necessary classes that I didn’t get in college, most notably Organic Chemistry, in addition to brushing up on the dusty chem, physics, and math knowledge that I learned at one point but haven’t used in my lawyer career.
What I am looking for is recommendation on books or online resources to most effectively re-learn the basics (physics, calculus, and chem mainly, with a lesser focus on biology)so I can be prepared to take an Organic Chemistry class without getting my ass handed to me. I travel a lot, so something that could be used on a laptop while flying, or something in Kindle format (any ebook, I can do the Kindle conversion) would be a plus, but I’m really just looking for what the best resources are. Thanks for any help!
As far as the organic chemistry goes the best text book I have read, and I’ve read a lot, is by Clayden, Greeves, Warren and Wothers. This is actaully the best by far - it is just superbly written. The senior author (Warren) taught chemistry at Cambridge for 40 years and has thought deeply about the best way of addressing all of the key concepts. It is the no-brainer recommendation for all chemistry degress in the UK.
However, I would not necessarily recommend this one to someone in your position, or certainly not as the only text book. You have a very specific goal, which is to knock off the org chem credit and get on to med school. So a beautifully crafted, 1000+ page org chem bible is maybe not the first order of business. Maybe some doctors can chime in, but there has to be some sort of ‘organic chemistry for medics’ text that can act as a quick and dirty primer. There must be loads of these books about, given how organic chemistry is feared campus-wide. Maybe scoop a couple of these up but get Clayden as well so you have a credible touchstone text.
Thanks for that…yeah, I want to do both, as in get the med school pre-req out of the way and actually learn it to a level of competence, so I’ll definitely check out that book.