Customer Reviews

Harper's Illustrated Biochemistry, 28th Edition (LANGE Basic Science)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The chapters in this text are broken up into individual topics which have short paragraphs associated with them, making this text an excellent resource for students trying to find out information about a specific topic quickly. For example, looking up Carbamoyl Phosphate Synthetase I in the index leads you to p. 245 where there is a short paragraph explaining the significance of the regulatory compound N-Acetylglutamate and the medical importance of this particular enzyme. This degree of organization would make this book a good resource to have on the shelf after students use it in their primary study of biochemistry. The large number of multi-colored diagrams support the text well and provide an easier read than many Biochemistry textbooks. This text would be a good resource for medical students in their study of basic medical science. It seems there is an increased amount of genetics and molecular biology in this text, which is the trend in medical schools and pre-medicine education. The Case Histories at the end of the text do an excellent job of validating the importance of the study of Biochemistry through application to clinical situations.

I'm a great fan of Harper's Biochemistry. I've used the 25th (paperback) edition for a couple years. I also love my Kindle. So I considered updating to the new 28th edition on my Kindle. I was a little dubious so I downloaded the sample as a test. Unfortunately, the sample chapters do not include any of the metabolic diagrams for which Harper's is justly famous, so I could not tell how well these would be rendered on my second generation Kindle. Many of the tables and figures in the sample chapters were, however, nearly illegible because they are so small and they are not increased in size by using the font size control. I could not find a way to expand the figures. So my bottom line is that this excellent textbook cannot be used effectively on a small-screen Kindle.

My daughter will use this book and outside the US for a medical study. Although a used book, it will help my daughter a lot, because this book is hard to find in my country, you cannot find it very easy on the bookshelf in a normal bookstore. It's great that I can find it very easy this way via Amazon.com.

Do not buy this book because many of the illustrated pathways have mistakes in the names of the metabolites and enzymes. The book lures, it looks nice, but when you pay attention to details, you see that it has a lot of bloopers. I returned it with the same explanation. I regret my wasted time.

This is a very useful book to have handy to look up thing, the details of which may have slipped away over the years. I preferred the format of previous editions, in that it had a smaller foot print.

This book is very in depth and tough to get through. My teacher said that it is used in medical school...so you get the point. However it presents the reader with the interesting chemical pathways of the human metabolism. I have a better understanding of how carbs, lipids and proteins are broken down synthesized in the human body. Happy Reading!

I bought this book to update my older biochemistry coursework. It's sufficient to cover the subject appropriately. I did not appreciate the irrelevant bashing of alternative medicine in the intro chapter. The subject is irrelevant to the topics that are covered in the book, and the authors are ignorantly commenting. Mind-body medicine is accepted by Duke University Medical School, among others. The authors should refrain from commenting on what they know not. I was unable to reach the authors for this feedback and so I write here.