Organic Chemistry 5th edition by William H. Brown is what got me through my C341 class in college, and I highly recommend it to all students of organic chemistry. Even if your class has a different textbook, it may help to pick up a copy of this. Buy it used, find it at a library, I don’t care what you do just get it somehow.
Now resonance and all that jazz is pretty typical in the Brown book, it’s not much better than other textbooks in that regard so for the basics I’d still go with Pushing Electrons, or another specialty book. But when it comes to learning organic reaction mechanisms, I’ve found no better book.
This text book explains them step by step with detailed reaction mechanisms that show what is actually happening at the atomic level. It will clearly show molecular rearrangement in certain reactions and it does a great job of tying together reactions that are similar. Plus it often features handy tables that will help you make the choice between similar reactions (like nucleophilic substitution vs beta elimination).
Trust me it’s very helpful. I’d include a picture of my textbook on my MicroKorg, but alas I’m a poor college student and the bookstore offered me a good deal for it.
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