Reddit reviews Purification of Laboratory Chemicals

For pleasure:

• The Disappearing Spoon
  
• Periodic Tales
  
• Stuff Matters
  
• Molecules of Murder
  
• The Elements of Murder
  
• The Elements
  
• Molecules
  
• Molecules that Changed the World
  
• The Chemistry Book
  
  Undergraduate
  
  
• Organic:
  Organic Chemistry as a Second Language, The art of writing reasonable organic reaction mechanisms
  
  
• Inorganic: Inorganic Chemistry, Molecular Symmetry and Group Theory
  
  
• Analytical: Principles of Instrumental Anlsysis, Fundamentals of Analytical Chemistry
  
  Graduate
  
  
• Organic: Advanced Practical Organic Chemistry, March's Advanced Organic Chemistry, Greene's Protective Groups in Organic Synthesis, Purification of Laboratory Chemicals, Strategic Applications of Named Reactions in Organic Synthesis
  
• Inorganic: Advanced Inorganic Chemistry

Ethanol is a very common recrystallization solvent. This is sitting on my desk right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if half of the recrystallization procedures in it call for ethanol. More relevantly, it also is non-toxic, which is useful if you're using it to purify something that's going to be consumed.

I'd posit that you could find a better recrystallization solvent if you tried hard enough, but it probably wouldn't be much better, and it'd probably be toxic.

pdf download for that book, if anyone is interested. It comes in handy on occasion.