Customer Reviews

Biochemistry

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Before you buy this book, you must carefully ask yourself what purpose you intend to use this for. As a textbook it is horrible, but will serve you well as reference material. V&V was inflicted upon me by my professor in my single-semester graduate level biochemistry course (I am a first year student working towards a PhD in Molecular Biology). The course was structured so that we were tested once a month on about 8-12 chapters of this book. Therefore, I did not have much time to dwell for very long on each chapter and was tested in significantly less detail than what was presented in the text. The problem, as others have stated, was that the author goes into excruciating detail for each component of the chapter and then fails to state exactly why it is important. For example, the text will spend two pages describing exactly how many beta sheets and alpha helixes an enzyme has, its folding substructures, the critical amino acid residues in the active sites, and what substrate analogs researchers used to elucidate the enzyme's function. Somewhere buried in that mess will be a few words on why the enzyme is related or important to the topic of the chapter. For most people, you will never ever need to know 95% of this material unless you are personally involved in research directly related to this topic. Otherwise you would be a complete fool to waste so much time memorizing the intimate details of all the proteins and molecules. Unfortunately with this text, the nitty-gritty details are not placed aside from the main points so that you can skip over them when need be. Instead you are forced to wade through the endless morass of minutia to find the few hidden gems of general principles.

This book covers much of the same material as Stryer with about twice the detail and vastly better illustrations. V&V's massive advantage is a detailed methods chapter that lets you understand how the advances in biology have been made, and why science is so slow and frustrating. If you're serious about understanding biological chemistry (as distinct from understanding how the cell works, in which case you'll want a book on molecular cell biology), look no further than this. The third edition will be coming out in 2002, at about the same time as the sixth edition of Stryer. Expect V&V to be more up-to-date, better illustrated and less verbose than its competition (although obviously I haven't seen either yet). If you're a medical student, try Devlin's Biochemistry with clinical correlations. If you want an integrated cell biology/biochemistry text, try Garrett and Grisham, including part 5.

V&V does a great job on details, however, it sadly misses the big picture. The meta and intuitive material is indeed there, but so buried as to be nearly useless. The reader has difficulty reconstructing a coherent whole.

To profit from V&V, you need either an unusually good prof, or a companion book such as Lehninger, Mathews, or Stryer. Read a chapter from the simpler text, then fill in the finer points with V&V. This learning model has worked very well for me.

Voet and Voet is meant for chemists. The legendary Stryer is meant for doctors, physicians, that just want to pull through biochem in some way, without having to revise all their calculus, physics and organic chemistry to keep their pride up high where it belongs. I believe that doctors in particular would find Voet & voet the superior text, because it always surveys the prerequisites that are needed for the moment. Stryer is likely to send you to other books all the time, to have terminology explained, to see mechanisms and to see tables that supply information to topics discussed. Styer supplies you with Anfinsen's anecdotes about Schoenberg to form an elegant surrogate of understanding the inherent beauty o Biochemistry, whilst Voet&Voet gievs you the information you need to understand biochemistrywell enough to see some of that beauty yourself. Do not by Stryer. There is nothing in it that you do not find in VOet&Voet. Styer has rotten pictures, rotten layout, a rotten index and a rotten binding - the book falls apart sooner or later; Voet is stitched so you can keep it forever and use it as much as you please.

Speaking as someone who suffered through what might be termed a "traditional" biochemistry sequence as an undergraduate (i.e. scads of memorization of every metabolic pathway on the planet; minimal emphasis on applying what you learned in general and organic chemistry to the class since it was assumed the premeds taking the class had forgotten it), the first time I read V & V was a breath of fresh air. I felt that biochemistry was not some obscure dark magic, but rather something that connected to the rest of chemistry. Now in what is termed "biophysics" ( I have a B.S. in chem and a doctoral degree in physics), I still reach for Voet and Voet whenever I need to check some obscure fact for whatever it is that I may be doing. To the 17 year old who said that all that chemistry stuff is "uncomprehendable", well, unless you've taken organic, inorganic and physical chemistry at a university level, it most likely is to you. However, for those of us who are actually trained in the physical sciences, Voet and Voet is the only real choice.

I find this book the best of is kind. This is mainly due to the many details and very good reaction-chemistry. Competing books tend to reduce chemistry to the cartoon level. Biochemistry by Voet & Voet show the way by their detailed and precise, easy-to-follow reaction chemistry. This book, is the best choice for students that want to learn biochemistry, and not just passing exams.

My biochem class "officially" uses the Lehninger textbook, but my professor also uses the voet&voet as a reference. I'll say the Lehninger book is good to read as intro, but if you really want to learn the details you've to use this book instead. I think not a single biochemistry book out there is good enough for every aspects, but i'll highly recommend using the voet text along with another one so they can fill each other's holes.

Voet and Voet is an excellent introductory biochemistry textbook. The focus leans more towards the chemical aspects as opposed to the biological, which allows it to fill an important gap among undergraduate texts. The scope is broad and comprehensive, with clear writing and informative illustrations. While the book is a valuable resource, the price is truly outrageous. For those adopting textbooks for classes, I recommend assessing whether the added chemical rigor is worth the added price for students. Serious and motivated students of biochemistry will likely appreciate and benefit most from this book. Check out the contents (e.g. at a library or college bookstore), and make sure they meet your needs, before taking the considerable financial plunge in buying this book though.

As a chemistry major at Baylor University, I like to have a set of textbooks on the side to refer to when studying for my classes. I appreciate the detail that V&V went into while writing this book, and I do find it very fitting for my major. There are also plenty of illustrations to fit to the material, and I find them quite helpful. If you are a chem major looking for a little more information, I would recommend this text.

I was first introduced to this book in my 3rd year undergrad biochemistry course (a biochem-for-biochem-majors course). I couldn't stand it! It went into so much detail about every aspect of biochemistry (well above and beyond the scope of the course), but never provided any simple introductions. Advanced material is always appreciated (by me, at least), but not in the required readings, and certainly not when there's no gradual introduction into it!

Three years later, I had to take a basic biochem course (with no exemptions allowed...argh), and the required book was the Berg, Stryer, etc. textbook. That book provides a great low-level introduction. Being the kind of person that likes to know a lot about a topic and actually UNDERSTAND material as opposed to memorising it, I started referring to my old Voet & Voet text again. What a difference! When I read sections of V&V with a basic understanding of the concept, it was very informative, helpful and INTERESTING!

I highly recommend V&V for everyone who wants to UNDERSTAND (not memorise) biochemistry, but absolutely not as the main textbook for an intro course. It's a great supplementary resource for those intro courses, and a fantastic reference afterward, but it's just too complex and in-depth for the beginner, even the beginner chem or biochem major.