Retaining his excellent, proven approach, world-famous chemist and passionate teacher K.C. Nicolaou and his student Jason S. Chen compile here the important strategies and tools employed to construct complex molecules. Through 42 syntheses of 25 challenging natural products they explain they key steps of the synthetic pathway, highlighting the major developments for easier understanding, and contrasting these to other synthetic methods. Similar to its predecessors and completing a trilogy, this textbook analyzes the syntheses in a didactic manner, with several chapters including mini-reviews of key methodologies, and an emphasis on the history, mechanism, scope, and generality of the reactions. In contrast to the first two volumes, this new one features full-color frontispieces . A wonderful tool for learning and teaching, and a must-have for all current and future organic, medicinal and biological chemists. From the reviews: ''The present volume-and hopefully future books of this series-offer an exciting and outstanding overview of the subject of natural products total syntheses in its complexity and variety.Classics in Total Synthesis III will surely itself become a classic in the literature on the state of the art of contemporary organic synthetic chemistry.'' - Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed. 2011 ''...a volume, (...) which any chemist with an interest in synthetic organic chemistry will wish to acquire.'' -JACS (on a previous volume) ''...this superb book (...) will be an essential purchase for many organic chemists.'' -Nature (on a previous volume) ''...One of my co-workers confessed that Classics I was the book on his bedside table while he prepared his thesis defense. Isn't that the highest distinction for a monograph?'' -Angewandte Chemie, 2004 (on a previous volume)