A comprehensive and contemporary treatment of the chemistry of hydrocarbons (alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, and aromatics) towards electrophiles, Hypercarbon Chemistry, Second Edition deals with all major aspects of such chemistry involved in hydrocarbon transformations, and of the structural and reaction chemistry of carboranes, mixed hydrides in which both carbon and boron atoms participate in the polyhedral molecular frameworks.

Despite the firmly established tetravalency, carbon can bond simultaneously to five or more other atoms. "Hypercarbon" bonding permeates much organic, inorganic and organometallic chemistry, and the book serves as the compendium for this phenomenon.

Copious diagrams illustrate the rich variety of hypercarbon structures now known, and patterns therein. Individual chapters deal with specific categories of compound (e.g. organometallics, carboranes, carbocations) or transformations that proceed through transient hypercarbon species, detailing fundamental chemistry, including reactivity, selectivity, stereochemistry, mechanistic factors and more.