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I’m a big fan of all of these. Clayden is very gentle (or maybe that’s just Org being easy...). But Atkins gets hard quite fast—-the chat from first years is that beginners will find it a bit tough. I’d generally recommend the cut down Atkins to start (Elements of...) or if you prefer pop Sci The Second Law was great as an UG trying to wrap my head around this. Creation Revisited also rocks.

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Yeah Atkins was quite heavy. That said, I think it does a good job of being self-contained. You could more or less get 80-90% of what you need with only that text from high school knowledge. But without additional resources and teachers supplementing, it will probably be too gruelling.

I think that's more because physical chemistry is quite hard

I second atkins, it's a classic and covers base to more advanced subjects very well imo.

I feel it takes time to read, but it's the one book that provided the most value in my understanding of chemistry.

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