Book excerpt: This practical, well-organized reference delves deeply into functional group transformations, to provide all the detailed information that researchers need. Topics are organized into the following sections: oxidation, reduction, asymmetric synthesis, and functional group manipulations Each section includes a description of the functional group transformation, the historical perspective, mechanisms, variations and improvements on the reaction, synthetic utilities and applications for the reaction, experimental details, and references to the primary literature Contributors are well-known and respected for their work on the specific name reactions.