Biochemistry (3rd Edition)

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Summary: A Definative book on the basics of Biochemistry!
Review: A very complete source for the basics of Biochem. A must read for the budding Biochemist. Dr Mathews was my professor for this course in college and has written a very complete introduction to the field.

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Summary: Easy to understand, clear and well organized
Review: Biochemistry by Mathews and van Holde is one of the best texts for any biochemist's need. The authors discuss almost all of the subjects any biochemistry class ever comes across. The language presented throughout the text is simple, yet cover the fundamental concepts nicely. The questions and answers given at the end of each chapter are well prepared and extremely useful for test preparation. This text is suitable for both medical and pure science students. I would give two thumbs up for Dr. Mathews and van Holde and cannot wait to see the new edition coming up.

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Summary: These people all lie
Review: Don't get me wrong; I'm actually a really smart guy. I'm in the honors program at UCI studying to be a doctor. And this book isn't very good. The reading, I will grant, isn't too bad. Most of the time it's easy to follow, and sometimes it's confusing. However, the problem comes when you try to put it all to the test and do the problems at the end of the chapter. Not only does the book present problems that were not covered in the reading, but it doesn't explain the answers, either. It just gives them to you. I am forced to constantly ask a friend of mine if he knows how to get the answer they give, because the book gives no indication of how to arrive at it. It also withholds information; in one problem in chapter 5 the answer they give is only possible, ONLY possible, if chymotrypsin cleaves a protein at isoleucine (the book only gives leucine, not iso-). In the next problem, it is virtually the same thing, taking cleavage information and trying to put amino acids in the correct order. However, in this one, their answer insists that you NOT cleave at isoleucine. Otherwise you'd be wrong and wonder what you did. Of course, you'd get no explanation. If you have to get this book for a class, then fine. Good luck with the homework if you have to turn in the problems. But if you're getting it to further challenge yourself of your own accord, search around for some type of solutions manual first, because this book won't tell you how to get anything. It assumes you have a lot of background knowledge already, so I don't know where one reviewer got the notion that this is great for beginners...

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Summary: A really excellent Biochem book.
Review: I am a biochemistry major at the university of the philippines. i have several biochem books on my shelf and i just recently purchased a copy of the 2000 edition (i also have the 2nd ed). the book just keeps getting better. the book really helps a lot especially when the class lecture corresponds with how the book presents the subject matter. as a biochem major, i'd say this is a pretty good way to present biochem. it makes it seem easy and fun to read. you look at the pictures and read the caption and you learn the idea in a flash.

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Summary: great book!
Review: I am a biochemistry major at the university of the philippines. i have several biochem books on my shelf and i just recently purchased a copy of the 2000 edition (i also have the 2nd ed). the book just keeps getting better. the book really helps a lot especially when the class lecture corresponds with how the book presents the subject matter. as a biochem major, i'd say this is a pretty good way to present biochem. it makes it seem easy and fun to read. you look at the pictures and read the caption and you learn the idea in a flash.

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Summary: Horrible Biochemistry Book
Review: I am Biomedical Engineering Pre-medical major at UCI in the honors program. I agree that the reading in the book is on par. However, there are several fundamental mistakes the book makes, especially in the biochemistry problems. This makes it especially difficult to become motivated to do the problems in the book to study for an exam because the answers in the back of the book are almost never consistent. Explanations for answers are very sparse and when the problems are explain problems, the explanations appear to come out of the blue and aren't related to anything that one could have discerned from the text. About inconsistency, there was one problem in Chapter Five that involved the enzyme chymotrypsin and its cleavage sites in a polypeptide chain. The book does not explain anywhere that chymotrypsin occasionally cleaves on the carboxyl side of isoleucine residues, however it has chymotrypsin do so in this particular problem. After learning this, I continued the problems under the assumption that the enzyme would cleave at isoleucine for any other problems unless otherwise specified. To my dismay, this was not the case. Another problem involved chymotrypsin and the enzyme did not cleave at the isoleucine residue as I was expecting. On top of this the answer given in the back of the book is incorrect. All in all this book is horrible. The professor teaching my biochemistry class has counted three very fundamental mistakes in this book so far and we are only three weeks into the quarter. I hope that is all the mistakes we will find this quarter, but this seems doubtful. This is simply unacceptable Christopher K. Mathews, K.E. van Holde, and Kevin G. Ahern. I expect that the fourth edition of this book will be filled with less mistakes.

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Summary: excellent text for the physical aspects of biochemistry
Review: I have not seen the 1995 edition yet, but have the 1990 edition of Mathews and van Holde. For anyone interested in structural biology and especially protein structure, I think this book is probably the best place to get started. It seems to me to be an excellent text all-around.

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Summary: One of the best biochemistry book
Review: I have not seen the 2000 edition yet, but the previous edition is very elegantly written. Compare with some other biochemistry text, this book provides another view into biochemistry. Almost (if not all) all the chapters have a special topic after the chapter text, showing you how we can turn the dry text into useful experimental tools for solving life's problem, scientifically. These special topics also give us a view into the physical chemistry world, which has become more and more important at the time.

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Summary: Illustrative
Review: It's difficult to review a book on a subject as biochemistry, when you're a student, and this is the only book I've read on the subject. This book is used by medical students at the Universty of Bergen, Norway, and as a student I find it very easy to read (if you have mind that biochemistry is not an easy subject). The illustrations and figures in the book are helpful, and often, you can get the essential in the text by only looking at the figures.

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Summary: Excellent Book to start Biochemistry!
Review: Mathew's Biochemistry is an excellent book to start this difficult subject! The easy diagrams and interesting notes just keeps you wanting to learn more...Read, read and read. If only it could have a more clinical focus it would be 100% perfect. Combine it with "Harper's Biochemistry" and you will soon run A+ on scores! To die for!