Author Description

The importance of ambident reactivity in synthetic and mecha nistic organic chemistry cannot be overemphasized. It is therefore all the more frustrating that the breadth and diffuseness of the subject make the retrieval of information from the primary literature a difficult and onerous task, especially for the researcher who wishes to gain an overview of the factors influencing ambident behavior or an in-depth knowledge of the reactivity of a specific ambident system. The present volume is an attempt to meet these needs, at least as far as ambident anions are concerned. As a reference work combining under one cover an account of the factors underlying ambident behavior, a survey of the chemistry of the most important ambident anions (with especial emphasis on enolates), and a comprehensive compilation of recent key references, important but less well known citations from the nineteenth and early twentieth century literature, and relatively inaccessible data from the Soviet literature, this translation goes some way to filling a conspicuous gap in the mono graph literature of an important facet of organic chemical reactivity.