Customer Reviews

Genes IX

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

 

 

The title of this review is a succinct description of it. We used Genes IX in one of my graduate courses at the University of Kansas Medical Center. The book is generally marketed as a high level text, but frankly I found it to be too simple. While I appreciate simplicity and generally promote the "KISS" way of thinking, I just couldn't get into it here. I felt it was lacking in detail. Further, there were a number of typos and minor factual errors that made me uncomfortable. I didn't feel confident learning from this book. I know its a widely loved text, so maybe I'm just missing something. I'll be generous and give three stars.

I bought this book to accompany a graduate-level molecular biology course, and found it extremely unhelpful. Midway though the course I stopped reading the book entirely in favor of depending on information from the lectures. I regret spending the money. The major problems with the book are:

- There are MANY obvious typos and editing errors. This is especially concerning because as a student you depend on your textbook for accurate information; you don't want to memorize a typo.

- The figures are vague, incompletely labeled, and often misleading.

- The organization of the text is disjointed. Essential detailed are completely left out of some discussions, only to be mentioned a few pages later. This makes it very difficult to form a coplete understanding of the topic.

One advantage of this book is that at the end of each chapter it gives a comprehensive list of reviews and papers from scientific literature that you can use to supplement your reading. If you are unfortunate enough to have to depend on this book for your learning of molecular biology, I would recommend doing this.

I'm not very happy with the way the genes books have been organized lately... the subjects are fragmented and it not always clear what we are reading, if it is prokaryotic or eukaryotic system, p.e.

Found the book in a better condition than I expected. Very happy with the purchase.

I have the older edition which is very good. But its not for the beginners...for them I would recommend Biochemistry by Lehninger or Molecular Biology of the cell by Cooper.

In the four years since the publication of Genes VII there have been tremendous changes in the subject resulting from the success of many genome sequencing projects. The importance of RNA as a regulator has become increasingly evident and now can be seen to extend across all levels of gene expression in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The abundance of new material required that either the book be greatly expanded or that some material be removed. The decision was made to allow a modest expansion (from 1050 to 1100 pages) and to remove some material that was not strictly related to genes and their expansion.

As Genes VIII was an improvement over Genes VII in terms of layout and presentation, this trend has been continued to allow the students to focus more sharply on the material. The new look has been tested to prove it facilitates student learning.

Finally a new dedicated web site has been set up for this book. However, when I attempted to browse to it I got a 404 error. I've asked the publisher for a new URL or at least a reason that it's not up.

The seller is not honest. The book was as described however, but the return policy was not honored. I emailed the seller several times, and never got an answer. Do not buy from the seller because he tarnishes Amazon's business and those sellers and buyers who are ethical when doing transactions.

"Josuatree books" (seller) is not a fair and honest person/business.

DO NOT BUY FROM SELLER. "Josuatree" HAS NO INTEGRITY.

it is a good book for students who want to know basic concept of genetics.