CARBANION CHEMISTRY

This book was prepared with the idea of collecting some of the multitudinous new literature on carbanions and pre- senting it along with the fundamentals of carbanion chemi- stry. Some 400 papers from the period 1976 to 1982 have been assimilated into the book along with about an equal number of references (many to reviews) from the earlier literature. The material is organized under the headings Structures (with emphasis on the results of X-ray studies since they unambiguously show the molecular geometry), Preparations, and Reactions. Reactions, the largest topic, is divided into reactions with electrophiles, eliminations, oxidations, and rearrangements. Under these headings, carbanions without resonance stabilization (0' carbanions) are generally discus- sed first, and are further subdivided into Sp3 (alkyl) followed by Sp2 (vinyl and aryl) followed by sp (acetylenic); resonance- stabilized (n) hydrocarbon anions such as allyl and benzyl follow; lastly, heteroatom-containing n carbanions such as enolates are considered. Some references to carbanion equivalents are included at the end.