Customer Reviews

The Marks' Essentials of Medical Biochemistry

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If you are taking a med./pharm. class I would suggest using a different text if offered. The basics are there, but you have to wade through a lot of B.S. to get there.
If this text is required then make sure you take good notes in class.

Well, this book LOOKS useful, does it not?
It purports to be a book that "has been streamlined to focus on only the most essential biochemical concepts important to medical students, while maintaining the key pedagological features that have made the larger text (on which this book is supposed to be based) successful.

Well, that would be fine if it were true but what we have here is a failed biochemistry text that has been "dressed up" with these clever side dialogs of make believe people with names like Mr. "Di abetes".
Cute huh? BUT, what is not cute is that the textual explanations of those key biochemistry concepts that the book was supposed to be covering in a "streamlined" way, instead become so wrapped up in the convoluted minutiae of the cellular and chemical processes involved that the key concepts, their hierarchical interrelationships, and their global biochemical, pharmacological and medical praxis become lost in a blaze of details and obscure diagrams. I have not seen the parent book on which this misbegotten offspring is based (nor do I want to) but what it looks like to me is that the publisher realized it had a losing text and then had little "patient stories" added to "dress up" the failed text book and this is the result. Usually there is one or two sentences in the lead paragraph explaining some concept and then they immediately launch into all sorts of details and minutiae which confuse and obscure the key concepts which will NOT be retained for future applicability, as they should have been.

If the student wanted the level of details that this book falls into, they might as well have bought the original book or a full fledged and better written and better illustrated textbook. If the student wanted a good overview which INTELLIGENTLY and carefully subsumes the details beneath well organized and thought out chapters then it is obvious that SOME OTHER book, not this one is needed.

This book is very good for explaining the complex biochemistry for aspiring health care professionals. The vignettes that are presented use names that are sometimes something you must overlook, but the content and context of the book was really useful and gives a solid foundation without being overly lengthy or complex.