Customer Reviews

Essentials of Molecular Biology

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Unfortunately, I could not disagree with my fellow reviewer more...

I was introduced to this text while a student in Dr. Malacinski's own molecular biology class at Indiana University. While I learned a great deal from the class itself, I found this book to be utterly disappointing in more ways than one. While he is undoubtedly a great teacher, Dr. Malacinski is a terrible author. His explanations of even the simplest concepts are confusing at best and downright confounding at their worst. Often, the book uses long, languid syntax to explain basic ideas, and in doing so, loses track of the fundamental basis of the concepts it is trying to elucidate. It seems to me as though Dr. Malacinski's purpose in writing an introductory textbook would be better served by offering his readers short, direct, and to-the-point explanations (such as those offered in the "Student Companion.") The trichromatic layout of all the book's diagrams make their interpretation difficult, and do little to provide the reader with relief from the bland nature of the prose. The text's lack of detailed color photographs is equally maddening - more than once when attempting to study one of the book's photographs, I felt as though I were staring at a "magic eye" collage rather than an electron micrograph. Additionally, Dr. Malacinski's attempts of to interject his personal opinions and imbibe his readers with enthusiasm for the subjects being treated feel trite and unnecessary. The text skims over many fundamental issues relevant to the study of molecular biology - most notably in its almost non-existent coverage of proteins and their role in molecular biology. I was equally disappointed in the book's total lack of coverage (or even introduction to) more advanced concepts in the field, particularly eukaryotic molecular biology. Although aptly titled "Essentials of Molecular Biology," students intending to pursue more advanced studies in the fields of biochemistry and molecular/cell biology will be poorly served by the book's complete omission of these advanced concepts. Altogether, while this book is one of the few molecular biology textbooks specifically designed for use in a one-semester undergraduate introductory course, many of the "more advanced" textbooks available provide a more comprehensive and easily understandable treatment of the material covered in this text. To those with a sincere interest in learning about both the concepts and breadth of molecular biology, I recommend "Molecular Biology of the Cell" (4th ed.) by Alberts et al, "Molecular Cell Biology" (4th ed.) by Lodish et al, and "Biochemistry" (5th ed.) by Berg and Stryer as alternatives to this book.

I read this book at the library and was highly impressed with the mode of explaination and representation. The book is highly informative giving the explaination with the best lucid way and the figures too are at the right places. How so ever the book would have been still more better if the method given at many places would have been clubbed with the major draw backs and precautionary steps.

All in one it is a very useful book to be obtained by the biologists working on the field

Vishal Shah

If your professor chooses to use this book, make sure you buy another Molecular Biology book to try and understand what is being said. Essentials of Molecular Biology explains some subject matter well, but a lot of the material covered is written in the scientific journal format.

This is not as good as the 3rd edition. The previous edition had much more relevant subjects.