Rating: 
Summary: Comprehensive introduction
Review: I can only agree with the other reviewers. The explanations are detailed enough to get an idea of the amazing processes that occur at the molecular level. All necessary concepts are covered in the text; a biological background is not required. The growing importance of biotechnology in modern society makes this book required reading for anybody who wants to form a well informed opinion on the power and promises of this modern science.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Terrible
Review: I hated using this book. It's organized differently from the course I took, so our readings were little passages, often less than 4 pages, scattered throughout the book. This is possibly the worst textbook I've ever tried to read. The text is boring and hard to get through. Most of my friends agreed that it was really hard to get through more than a few pages at a time of this. I thought the subject matter was boring, and that was why it was so hard to read, but then I bought the Alberts book, for my next molecular biology course, and I realized the problem was the author of this book. I also found the diagrams and page layout less than user friendly.
Rating:
Summary: Scicchitano undermines Lodish's brilliance
Review: I have read snippets of this book as Scicchitano was my professor of molecular cell biology at NYU, therefore I'm naturally curious. He was quite well-spoken about the basics behind the subject - even, at times, verbose - yet he elevated that lucid core knowledge of the subject to such a great pomp that I cannot dissociate my experience of his fluff from this publication. Forgive me Harvey Lodish, but you would have done better not to collaberate with him, and you did do better by indeed discluding him from your molecular cell biology textbooks. (In class, David's jealousy at Dr. Lodish's superior intellect was obvious, as he took time out of every class to slam Lodish's molec cell 4th edition)
Rating:
Summary: Scicchitano undermines Lodish's brilliance
Review: I like this book. There's a good amount of content, accompanied with excellent illustrations. However, the organization is pretty bad -- instead of describing processes such as transcription in a natural sequence, the authors jump around from one thing to another, making it hard to find things. The index isn't comprehensive enough, either.one more caveat: my Cell Phys professor, who's a botanist, complained about the lack of coverage of plant cells, and he's right.
Rating: 
Summary: Content good, organization bad
Review: I like this book. There's a good amount of content, accompanied with excellent illustrations. However, the organization is pretty bad -- instead of describing processes such as transcription in a natural sequence, the authors jump around from one thing to another, making it hard to find things. The index isn't comprehensive enough, either. one more caveat: my Cell Phys professor, who's a botanist, complained about the lack of coverage of plant cells, and he's right.
Rating:
Summary: Good textbook
Review: I liked this book, it is complementary to the Alberts' book in many areas. However as any textbook it is good for learning the basic concepts, but in real science is useless and outdated, for up-to-date information you should search MedLine and latest issues of scientific journals.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good Introduction to Biology
Review: I think author made every effort to make the subject simple to understand. It does not go to much into details yet covers more in general terms. If you need more detailed information you could look at book "The Cell" but I found this book more easier to follow. Pictures are better.This book has lesser pre-requisite information to follow and understand what is going on.It has all the standard subjects of Molecular Cell Biology. Cell itself is explained in laymans terms with good pictures.
Rating:
Summary: Used this book as text for course
Review: I used this book as the text for a UC Santa Cruz extension course in molecular cell biology. I read about 2/3 of it for course reading assignments and I found it to be excellent. It's clearly and well written but is definitely information dense. You really have to focus closely while you're reading it. Expect to need to read most sections at least twice to absorb the material. The diagrams are plentiful, are well drawn and must also be studied carefully since they contain information not included in the body of the text itself. Information has obviously been updated as new versions of the book have appeared. This 4th edition has many references to publications as recent as 1999. The animations in the accompanying CD are sometimes useful. A good example is the animation in chapter 22 of cell-cell adhesion in leukocyte extravasation.
Rating:
Summary: A very informative book
Review: I used this book in conjunction with Branden and Tooze's Intro to Protein Structure for an intro molecular biology course. I thought it contained alot of information and very nice diagrams, but it was a little dense. I guess the field just contains too much information to learn in one semester and that might be why I thought this book was too dense. However, the language is not too technical and it doesn't give you a headache to read it. Theres just a lot of information to learn, and no matter what text book you use, you'll still have to synthesize all this material. I think that all in all Lodish did a good job. I might suggest that in the future, a chapter on structural biology be included, but then again, that could be a whole other book!
Rating:
Summary: It's full of information.. but not boring at all.
Review: I'm a biology student and have learned something about cell biology before reading this book. However, I found this book very interesting and informative. Some examples seem to be quite complex. However, the authors presents those complexity in the way that easy to follow and not too oversimplifying.
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