Customer Reviews

Essential Cell Biology 2 PB

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have read a good number of science texts, and this one just doesn't seem to be as good as the others. The explanations are adequate, though not to the level that Marieb's Anatomy and Physiology was or to the extent of Biology by Campbell and Reese. In class, the professor told us to refer to Campbell and to "Molecular Biology of the Cell" for better explanations.

The glossary is incomplete, and often key terms are just nt there. The index suffers from the same trouble, even when the chapters address the topic. Lastly the graphics, just don't seem to be as well planned as those in the texts mentioned above.

I understand that many do not have a choice given that most buy the book as an assigned text. My recommendation, therefore, is to save your old textbooks and to ask that your professor place a copy of Molecular Biology of the Cell on reserve at your school library.

I feel this is a very good textbook for molecular biology rookies as well as for pros wanting to revive their concepts ... Molecular Biology of the Cell could serve as an excellent companion book or rather reference book for this textbook ... the cd provided along with the Essential Cell Biology book is a great tool to understand the way things work ... in short, it is a must book for mol bio students to know what they are doing and to do things better:) It could also serve as a great book for biomedical engineers to grasp more of biology and engineer the concepts better. The book is definitely more simplified (kinda an abridged version) and easier to understand than "Molecular Biology of the Cell". Although, the size of the latter makes it look more formidable for beginners, I must add it is indeed a great reference book for researchers!

After taking my first course in cell biology I discovered a number of things about the subject. 1) Cell Biology is a HARD CLASS! In my class, we covered about 18 or so chapters of material. Tests were based mostly on memorization of both relevant and obscure facts as well as many, many molecular processes. For someone that is pressed for time and tries to cram before tests, there will be problems. 2) It is difficult to understand many of the processes in cell biology without some chemistry background. When I took the class, I was also in organic chemistry 2, but that didn't help much. If I could have done it over again, I would actually take Biochemistry before Cell because processes in Cell Biology are explained briefly and mostly independent of the chemistry involved, which forces the student to memorize information without really understand why these processes occur. 3) In general, Biology is becoming more problem based and in order to understand cell, you need to have solve useful questions.

Based on the inherent difficulties of Cell Biology that I have mentioned, I don't think that this book did much to bridge any of these learning gaps. The molecular processes were explained briefly which was ok, but since there was so many of them, it was still hard to manage. The chemistry of cell biology in this book is poorly explained. Chemical structures are largely discarded in favor of acronyms. Obvisously, acronyms are favored for the long run, but a firm understanding of the chemical structures needs to be understand first. In my opinion, this book relied too much on acroynms.

Finally, the questions in this book were terrible. Some were just inane (Compare signs of life for a rock and a plant) while others were just pointless (Calculate something or the other). Also, there were many problems that I was just clueless to even though I had read the information in the book. These problems asked what would happen if some molecular process was somehow disturbed. Obvisouly, questions of this nature are essential in understanding cell biology, but the book did not provide enough information to come up with a feasible answer. In my opinion, this book should be much more problem based and should have fair problems that are able to be solved, and there should be a student solutions book available that provides clear explanations to all questions.

This book was decent for basic concepts, but not really useful for really understanding the subject matter. I would recommend looking for a different text, even if this is the required text for your class.

If u are a layman and want to know about the fascinating world of

cell biology, this is THE book to get!! It teaches u nearly everything from scratch (it starts from an atom's structure!!)and

very gently and lucidly leads you through the awesome workings of

the cell. Get through this book and u can easily & painlessly tackle ANY other magnum opus book like Lehninger, MBoC by Alberts or Lodish etc. ITS SIMPLY WONDERFUL!! THE BEST THAT IS OUT THERE!! You get to know all the important fundamental things about cells and more!! The new How We Know sections explain how

molecular biologists performed experiments and came to the conclusions they came. JUST GET THIS BOOK. YOU PROBABLY WON'T FIND A BETTER INTRODUCTORY BOOK ON CELL BIOLOGY!!

If you want to save money - the 2nd edition is almost 100% the same as the 3rd. It is easy to find the differences.

It is an okay book for cell Biology. Some books provide better info on certain subjects. Good luck with the class!

This edition and the next one don't seem to have that many differences (i.e. page numbering, some graphical content). It's a useful tool in learning cell biology. Didn't really use it for the course I took, but whenever I consulted it, I was able to understand everything quickly.

I was a bit disappointed by this book which was recommended for my medical school course. It's written at a very introductory level; the over simplification doesn't always provide more clarity.

Alberts has a different book called "The Cell", which is 3 times as long, and I believe has greater clarity. I have taken to skimming this more detailed book, which I find to be a better resource and will surely be a better reference in the future.

This book is jam pack full of information from cover to cover. However, it is quite readalbe for the capable biology student. My biggest complaint is that the vocabulary words are not listed off to the side or defined clearly in the text. Essentially, the vocab is used and bolded in the text. It is then expected that you will look it up later, which takes a fair amount of time. Other than that, this book does a fair job covering a dry subject to most biology students and makes it bearable. The diagrams are helpful, but could be slightly more ergonomic. Overall though, I am pleased with it.

Very good cell and molecular biology book. It is in-depth and specific. The only problem is the uninviting font.

This is a good bio text for an undergrad (or maybe even high school?) class. It's very straight-forward. It was only used in my class for ten weeks, but I liked the way the material was presented, and the text served to reinforce what I learned in class. My class this year has used four books, and this one was probably my favorite overall and was definitely my favorite one that covered molecular/cell bio.