Publisher's Synopsis
The vast explosion of information in organic chemistry has presented the chemist with the tedious exercise of searching Chemical Abstracts for details of a compound or reaction type. On-line searching has somewhat alleviated this but the task still remains of putting this information into perspective. "Rodd" does this for the reader. The authors of each chapter have already sifted through Chemical Abstracts, picked out the relevant references, and used their professional skills to present the contents in a concise and critical manner. Each volume in the series has a detailed index facilitating the rapid location of reaction types, synthetic procedures, or individual compounds.;The present volume is devoted to the chemistry of polyhydric alcohols, including saccarides. It is a vast and important area, not only because of the prominent roles which polyols have in their own right, but because of the way they and their modified forms are incorporated into natural products. The selection of individual topics allowed extensive coverage of the applications of carbohydrates as chiral auxiliaries, templates, and starting materials in syntheses. So important is this area that many organic chemists who hitherto never ventured near carbohydrate chemistry now regard complex manipulations of sugars as their "backyard". These topics were not singled out in the first supplement, but have received detailed attention here.
