For two-semester courses in General Chemistry. McMurry/Fay's atoms-first text progresses from the simplest building blocks to successively more complex concepts enabling the authors to tell a cohesive story about chemistry that follows an intuitive logic. This unified thread of ideas helps students build a better foundation and ultimately gain a deeper understanding of chemical concepts. Students can more easily understand the micro-to-macro connections between unobservable atoms and the observable behavior of matter in daily life, and are brought immediately into real chemistry—instead of being forced to first spend time with arithmetic.

KEY BENEFIT: This is the first mainstream general chemistry book to be written with an atoms-first approach, offering the same lucid character and conceptual emphasis that readers have come to expect from these authors. The atoms-first organization progresses from the simplest building blocks to successively more complex concepts, enabling the authors to tell a cohesive story about chemistry that follows an intuitive logic. This unified thread of ideas helps readers build a better foundation and ultimately gain a deeper understanding of chemical concepts. Readers can more easily understand the micro-to-macro connections between unobservable atoms and the observable behavior of matter in daily life, and are brought immediately into real chemistry-instead of being forced to first spend time with arithmetic.
Chemistry: Matter and Measurement; The Structure and Stability of Atoms; Periodicity and the Electronic Structure of Atoms; Ionic Bonds and Some Main-Group Chemistry; Covalent Bonds and Molecular Structure; Mass Relationships in Chemical Reactions; Reactions in Aqueous Solution; Thermochemistry: Chemical Energy; Gases: Their Properties and Behavior; Liquids, Solids, and Phase Changes; Solutions and Their Properties; Chemical Kinetics; Chemical Equilibrium; Aqueous Equilibria: Acids and Bases; Applications of Aqueous Equilibria; Thermodynamics: Entropy, Free Energy, and Equilibrium; Electrochemistry; Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Water; The Main- Group Elements;
Transition Elements and Coordination Chemistry; Metals and Solid - State Materials; Organic Chemistry.
MARKET: A comprehensive reference for anyone who needs to learn more about general chemistry.

Educated at Harvard and Columbia, John McMurry has taught approximately 17,000 students in general and organic chemistry over a 30-year period. A Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University since 1980, Dr. McMurry previously spent 13 years on the faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has received numerous awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1969—71), the National Institute of Health Career Development Award (1975—80), the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (1986—87), and the Max Planck Research Award (1991). Professor of Chemistry Robert C. Fay has been teaching general and inorganic chemistry at Cornell University since 1962. Known for his clear, well-organized lectures, Dr. Fay was the 1980 recipient of the Clark Distinguished Teaching Award. He has also taught as a visiting professor at Harvard University and the University of Bologna, Italy. He has been an NSF Science Faculty Fellow at the University of East Anglia and the University of Sussex, England, and a NATO/Heineman Senior Fellow at Oxford University.