Biochemistry (Chapters 1-34)

Rating:
Summary: Messy, inaccurate, old-fashioned and misleading.
Review: ///--//Buon Giorno! Dr. Bassi (B.Sc.Physics;M.Sc.Chemistry/PhysicalOrganicChemistry; Ph.D./PhysicalOrganicChemistry/QuantumOrganicSynthesis) hereby presents another review for www.Amazon.com! Sorry, as usual, for any grammatical mistakes (I am Italian and live in Rome - I'm looking for a GREAT girl-friend, between 20 and 30, that's into this stuff and/or classical music!). Thanks, all you that have sent feedback to me on previous reviews! (I cannot respond to everyone, and particularly not in Spanish or Portugese - or Dutch! ) Write to me at home: [e-mail] //-// The present book, Stryer's "Biochemistry", 4th ed., is not something that I can recommend to anyone, for many reasons./// 1.It is hard to extract information from c:a 99% of the pages because of a generalized chaotic, imprecise and sometimes equivocal style of presentation of facts. Due to this, it requires some degree of effort to get through every page, even for someone who knows the topics very well./// 2. Terminology is used without sensitivity to whether it has been defined or not. Sometimes, Stryer addresses people with a junior high-school background, other times he addresses people who have taken university courses in genetics and medicine. The space used in the margins on amusing anecdotes or curious ethymology could have been invested in defining terminology instead./// 3. Terminology is used incorrectly, and things are not seldom implied that implicitly violate fundamental laws of nature. To risk leading students with faith in the author to false notions, in this way, is hardly excusable and particularly not after three revisions./// 4. Organic reaction mechanisms are presented with lack of detail, which renders many of them confusing or even desinformative. The esteemed author, with his complete entourage of esteemed reviewers, has obviously both forgotten the contents of his taken organic chemistry courses (merely to be able to write "enol" instead of "enolate ion", or to call neutral molecules with formal charges "ionized", bears testimony to an exceptionally perverted view on organic chemistry) and has not taken part of the development in organic chemistry for decades. 5. Illustrations are often equivocal and/or hard to follow (and thus fill no function) and are nearly always very old and primitive/ugly. 6. Details of reactions that should be experienced as baffling, on physical-chemical grounds, are not brought to the fore. This kills the attentiveness of students and much of their appreciation of the uniqueness of every chemical reaction. 7. The chapters on enzyme kinetics are exceptionally messy and qualitative, in addition to leaving out vital things as ping-pong kinetics. 8. The author resorts to poetry, when he is unable to communicate the beauty of a chemical situation by decribing it by itself. This is like pouring after-shave over copies of the score of a Mozart concerto - stapled together so that it cannot be opened and read - and handing the copies out to the audience, instead of than playing the concerto for them. 9. Stryer claims that certain conclusions can be drawn by the reader from experimental findings (having to read a thousand names of researchers and their univeristies in the running text is a ghastly nuiscance) that he presents, when in truth the conclusions that he finally arrives at involve many other experiments, not mentioned - as well as chance discoveries. This destroys the self-confidence in students, that fail to deduce those "final" results. (At the same time, it is proved that the author himself never went through the deduction process, himself.)/// 10, The index is absolutely rotten. With so many facts mixed up into a chaos, a good index would have been a needy rescue to the desperate student./// 11. The book presents an unmodern perspective in its nearly complete lack of discussion of bioinformatics. One does not even find many references to bioinformatic literature./// 12. Organic nomenclature is very often used illogically and incorrectly. Embarrassing. /// 13. For some reason, biologists like to turn thermodynamics into a whore-house. This is an untenable position that hopefully ameliorate as biotechnology gains more strength. 14..., 15... , 16.../// 55. Pedagogical aids would have been wonderful to see, but the author belongs to those that think that it reduces one's prestige as an expert to make one's discipline appear uncomplicated. This is a major fallacy! In simplicity lies beauty (which Stryer even says, now and then; what hipocrisy!). The author should look at Campell's "Biology" (Benjamin Cummings), to receive inspiration from a pedagogical genius, a master of lay-out and crafting clear explanations, brilliant flow-charts and illustrations etc. etc./// 56. The binding of this expensive (in Italy) book is so poor that after a week's use, most of it will have desintegrated. The reason: the attitude taken by greedy publishers, which is stupid and downright unethical. (I hope that more authors will do as Stephen Gasiorowicz (Minnesota Univ.), who demanded J. Wiley & Sons to bind his great "Quantum Physics" (1995) in folds and sew them with threads, in the proper way!)/// OVERALL, the book reminds one very much of an anthology. One paragraph tells you a little of this, another a little of that. The author does not even AIM at coherence. The necessary consequence is that the reader, desiring understanding, has got to keep a pile of other books nearby, all the time, from a host of disciplines. /// If there is one thing that is certain about the development of science in the future, it is that its branches will come closer, being unified by a very strong mathematical foundation, both "physical" (calculus-based) and "discrete"/"computer-scientific" in nature. I know of no biochemistry book that is written in this spirit, but Voet&Voet's "Biochemistry" (Wiley 1995; third edition released any day) is the book against which the fewest objections of the kind outlined here can be raised (merits: good organization, definitions, mechanisms and illustrations)./// If you aim high, take all the maths, physics and physical chemistry you are capable of, parallel with the biology. Only with these tools will you be able to carve the future for makind with a steady hand./// Cordiali saluti/Best wishes, Dr Giovani Bassi//--///

Rating:
Summary: Learn elsewhere
Review: A disorganized muddle of clinical correlations, chemical mechanisms, and pathways, the text attempts to destroy an otherwise beautiful topic. It is difficult to extract the main pts and organize the information into a coherent fashion. But fortunately there are other texts, and a map showing how all the pathways converge and a table w/enzymes organized by mechanism w/cofactor, rxn info will be golden. With books like Lippincott's Reviews and Voet&Voet, youll be biochemistry's biggest fan in no time.

Rating:
Summary: A litle bit confuse, but a nice start.
Review: As a medicine student, I used this book to introduce myself to biochemestry before the classes and as a reference guide. Even knowing only very simple concepts of chemestry, it won't be hard to understand this book. It is, indeed, a litle bit confuse (not the text, only the organization) and the chapter sequence is weired (for example, the chapter about the structure of DNA and the other about the control of gene expression are far, far away). Because of this organization, you just can't read this book in sequence or you'll get lost. There are chapters about molecular biology too, and they are a great start so you can go deeper on this matter using Bruce Albert's Molecular Biology of the Cell.

Rating:
Summary: Jack of a few trades, master of none
Review: As with any intro text, this book tries to reach the largest audience possible. The problem is that it has deficiencies in many areas. The initial sections on DNA are short, completely avoiding any detailed mechanisms about DNA replication or transcription, putting those with a background that is stronger in chemistry at a disadvantage. When it comes to proteins, the book seems to have no trouble giving detailed mechanisms but the mechanisms are often obscure and poorly labeled (notably in serine proteases and metal-ion catalysis) making the information more difficult for those stronger in regular biology. Perhaps the worst part is that this book, which was chosen for my professor based on its integrated web courseware, has a website that is often unresponsive and seems to only work on old versions of Netscape. Nonetheless, I still keep a copy on my bookshelf for reference since the sections on proteins (notwithstanding the diagrams) are actually pretty good. All in all, an okay text and decent reference but certainly not for someone looking to pursue a career in biochemistry, molecular biology, or medicine. If you have a choice, the new Lehninger 4th edition is way better.

Rating:
Summary: Keep looking for a better text!!
Review: Celeste, BS, PharmD (soon). This text is unintelligible to a student of pharmacy. The lack of a good index or even a glossary of terms is painful at best, and downright unforgivable at worst. There are many errors in sentence structure and grammar. Continue searching for a text that can be understood if you are an intermediate level student, or knowledge seeker.

Rating:
Summary: CONCISE; YET, WELL-DETAILED
Review: Compiled by an experienced mind, this "Biochemistry" by Lubert Stryer may seem a little pricey, but it is worth investing on. Its everyday language is comprehensive, generously illustrated, and presents details using a concise format. The book was designed for intermediate learners; although that its aura appeals to both beginners and advanced students. The sequential organisation of each section makes self-teaching an easy task. There are also revised chapters with overviews of Developmental Physiology and Genetics. It is a very fine text.

Rating:
Summary: CONCISE; YET, WELL-DETAILED
Review: Compiled by an experienced mind, this "Biochemistry" by Lubert Stryer may seem a little pricey, but it is worth investing on. Its everyday language is comprehensive, generously illustrated, and presents details using a concise format. The book was designed for intermediate learners; although that its aura appeals to both beginners and advanced students. The sequential organisation of each section makes self-teaching an easy task. There are also revised chapters with overviews of Developmental Physiology and Genetics. It is a very fine text.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introductory Biochemistry Text
Review: Finally, an introductory biochemistry text with a decent amount of chemistry in it! After seeing most biochemistry texts slowly turn into boring biology tomes over the past decade or more, it is heartening to see the latest edition of Stryer's Biochemistry. Jeremy Berg has done an excellent job of bringing back the chemistry into this classic text.

Rating:
Summary: An inevitable textbook for medical students!!!
Review: From my view point, all the medical students in the world are required to conquer the biochemistry . Stryer's graceful working deprived me of fear about biochemistry. I could answer all the questions to myself within this book. It can meet the need for profound knowledge.

Rating:
Summary: Stryer - Biochemistry
Review: Great for basic Freshman year biochemistry courses. A little unreadable at times but offers manageable amounts of information for the beginner as well as more advanced students.