What are the "best of the best" textbooks to help me learn chemistry from the ground up?

<p>After 20 years of being a locksmith, I have decided that I want to get a college degree and I'll be starting next year! As part of my degree, I will be doing two chemistry courses which will cover energy and equilibrium, atoms to molecules, periodicity and the main group metals and non-metals, transition metal chemistry, acids/bases/kinetics/electrochemistry, structure determination and synthetic and bio-organic chemistry.</p>

<p>However my foundations are very weak so I'll need to start as if I know absolutely nothing about chemistry! Could I please get some chemistry textbook recommendations that are comprehensive, precise and to the point? If it's better to have separate textbooks for the different fields in chemistry then please recommend them all!</p>

<p>I am doing the same thing. Try checking out Coursera.org. Its like ItunesU. Has great Chem courses. I am using a textbook called Essentials Introductory Chemistry by Nivaldo J. Tro. Got the fourth edition for ~40$ from Amazon. It is the text used as Duke University. </p>