Book excerpt: "The Seventh Edition has been written with students like you in mind who are encountering organic chemistry for the first time. When learning and studying organic chemistry, you first must master fundamental principles of structure and reactivity that will then serve as the foundation on which to lay subsequent information. When we put a puzzle together, as depicted in the cover image of this book, we must work piece by piece until the larger picture comes into view. Similarly, the individual steps to learning organic chemistry are quite simple; each by itself is relatively easy to master. But there are many pieces involved in learning organic chemistry -- far too many to memorize. One would never try to memorize the position of each piece within a 500 piece puzzle! Mastering organic chemistry requires an understanding of fundamental principles and the ability to use those principles to reason, analyze, classify, and predict."--