Customer Reviews

Biochemistry: Molecules, Cells, and the Body

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

It's a good one semester-type of book. It is concise and clear at the same time. I just saw a number of mistakes with carbohydrates, esp. disaccharides, e.g. Fig 12.12 on p.435, problem 14.b on p.452 etc. Please Mary, do not trust your TA-s for these things because you cause a lot of confusion among us, the stupid undergrads!

I used this text in our 300-level undergrad biochemistry course. It was written quite simply, and most of the diagrams were good (although the professor had to correct many mistakes he had found). It is great for an introductory book, but it stinks for a student intending to pursue graduate study in the subject. I would recommend Stryer's biochem book for a more in-depth look at the topic.

This is quite possibly the worst science related text I have ever read. The organization is terrible, there are so many mistakes in the book I didn't even know what was correct, the explanations of reactions are vague. It was listed through Cengage's site that most books come with online tutoring software but nobody in my class had any tutoring software available with the book.

I purchased the online software for another $33 and it is the worst software out there. Pearson has high quality online tutoring software and I had thought Cengage's technology would be comparable but get this...the only thing you get for $33 more is the SAME exact picture in the book except the picture just spins around. There aren't even any explanations for what is going on in the reaction. I almost feel like reporting Brooks/Cole Cengage to the Better Business Bureau.

There is only one good thing I have to say about this book. The questions in the back of the book are good and the explanations are thorough. However, with that said, not all the chapters have questions in the back that are explained well. There are a few chapters that only have answers to the questions and no explanation.

If you have to get this text for class, be prepared! You will need more material or a good teacher and please do not make the same mistake I made and waste your money on the online software!!! They refused to refund me after only a couple of weeks of purchasing it!!! Even after I said I would pay for the two weeks I used. I will never buy anything from these authors and most definitely not from Cengage or Brooks/Cole ever again!!! Go with Pearson (I like them the best) or McGraw-Hill, I haven't had any problems with any of their books!

My fellow medical students,

Having been recommended this tomb by my fellow peers, I - like many others - opened Biochemistry: Molecules, Cells and the Body with great anticipation and excitement. I was sure that dispensing of my superflous second kidney to fund this £40 purchase would be a most invaluable and worthy investment.

However, I must say with utmost solemnity that it was not to be the case...

From the outset, one is immediately struck by the poor layout and organisation of this publication. Chapters (and i use the word loosely) seem to have been group based on some form of Random Allocation, with very little consistency of thought from one topic to the next - resulting in a stunning dyslexic collocation of information. This is only matched by the utter confusion of the'Index'; searching for a valuable piece using this tool at times takes on the style of a Treasure Hunt, with much linkage and referral to related pieces of text situated many hundreds of pages from each other. The language is most inconsise and verbose - 50 words are used for what could be said in 10 - and one feels like one is being taken on a biochemical journey from A to B via Z.

However I did find that this book had some redeeming features; for example, i obtained much shelter from the elements using this book (very important in rainy Glasgow!). And its most excellent paper quality ensured that my fireplace was kept going nice and sprightly throughout the night.

I feel obliged to point out to propective buyers that although not an actual medical doctor, Jocelyn Dow is currently head of 2nd year medicine at Glasgow University - an incredible feat - and as such one should expect that this work would tie in closely with the sylabbus as taught at that institution. (While it may not be highly thought of by (un-named) fellow faculty members, the book is in fact is very freqeuntly referred to at lectures and has replaced Baynes' and Dominiczak's book as being the 2nd year text of choice).

I would advise fellow peers to hold out for a second edition of this work - which will inevitably be an improvement, and i cannot understand why the publishers did not push for one- but until then, i still believe that texts such as Stryer and Baynes are more worthy of your purchase.

Thank You
Disgruntled D; Glasgow

Everyone in the class disliked this book, including the instructor. I found it a chore to read, something that is not usually the case for me. There were numerous mistakes--including in at least one of the formulas given in the book, which had signs reversed. It was unorganized and difficult to read, going far too in depth for an undergrad course in some areas and not far enough in others. If you are an instructor, pick a different book!

It wasn't a bad textbook for the course I took which was only a 2.5 month course. I did have the opportunity to read some chapters of the Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry book, and I have to say that it was much better than this book because the information was presented in a way that was clearer and easier to understand. On the plus side, the Biochemical Connections pages in this book brought up some very interesting and thought-provoking issues. If this book is not required for a specific course, I would suggest getting the Lehninger book instead.

This is, without a doubt, the worst science textbook I have ever used - and with a degree in chemical engineering, I have used a number of science textbooks.

The text is imprecise and unclear. You will find yourself reading it multiple times to see if you missed the definitions and explanations, only to realize that no, it just isn't there. And that is just the text. For my class, I was also required to purchase online access with OWL to complete the homework problems. OWL is no better - I have found multiple conflicts between the text and OWL, not to mention multiple mistakes and equations that are just plain incorrect in the homework problems.

Did I mention I'm only at chapter 3? I know most people purchasing this book don't have a choice, it was assigned. But if you have any choice in the matter, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. I don't know how something like this was approved for publishing.

Writing a biochemistry text that is comprehensive, clear, and up to date (reflecting the gist of the thousands of research papers published each year) is an almost impossible task. This book gets most of the way through that task, but still falls noticeably short of perfection. Chief among the nagging shortcomings are charts and graphics which are sometimes unclear (perhaps 10% could be improved), and uneven editing of text. The defects in the graphics are not so much content as presentation -- grouping of items, labels, and font sizes are often not conducive to seeing what is what.

Examples of incomplete editing are chapter and section summaries that address points never mentioned in the text. Indeed, the summaries are usually quite good and one wishes that the same concision and clarity were more uniformly in evidence in the longer text expositions. In some of the sections drawing on recent research -- e.g. the coverage of DNA to RNA transcription in Chapter 11, there is sometimes an almost random cataloging of recent research -- i.e., here are all the things we know about this transcription factor, in no particular order and with no particular relationship to the (necessarily simplified) themes we are able to bring out in this book. For the most part, however, the organization imposed on the chaos of research is creditable and comprehensible.

So, in sum, the book reflects an almost superhuman amount of work, but is still flawed. I suspect the hard truth is that there is simply not sufficient demand for such a text to permit the industrial-scale enterprise that has made a book such as Campbell and Reece's Biology so superb and in effect a "category killer" in its field.

The book is almost new, much better than I have expected. Thank you very much.

The book was in the condition as described and arrived in a timely fashion!