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Title: Biochemistry (Chapters 1-34) by John L. Tymoczko, Jeremy M. Berg, Lubert Stryer ISBN: 0-7167-3051-0 Publisher: W.H. Freeman Pub. Date: 15 February, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $149.10 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.79 (28 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Easy to read, but not so good to study from
Comment: This book is considered a classic in its field, and, indeed, had few serious competitors up until about eight years ago. But, with new undergraduate texts that appeared since then, the weaknesses of Stryer's text became more apparent.
1. The text is not structured well enough: its 37 chapters are divided into a number of titled topics, but it is apparent that students would find it easier to manage if each chapter were divided into 4-8 major topics,just the way it has been done in 'Student companion for Stryer's Biochemistry' by Gumport et al.
2. It seems that the book owes part of its popularity to the fact that the most difficult topics have either been left out or are covered very briefly and with serious lack of rigor. The most notorious example is incredibly poor coverage of biochemical energetics. Since most readers are life science majors or medical students with little background in thermodynamics and electrochemistry, this ought be treated in a more detailed and more serious manner. Many students find the treatment of energetic aspects of oxidative phosphorylation and photosynthesis so unclear tham majority of them find it necessargy to consult some other text to figure things out. The same goes for enzyme kinetics - it is just inexcusable for a text of this size to completely ignore discussion of bisubstrate kinetics and other common complex kinetic systems.
As a conclusion, Stryer's Biochemistry 4th ed. is still readable and up-to date text. However, nowadays there are several other texts of about the same size and aiming at the same audience, but with much less things to complain about. As a TA in an undergraduate biochemistry course, I found texts by Mathews and van Holde (1996), Garrett and Grisham (1995) and Lehninger, Nelson and Cox (1993) to be more adequate for the needs of most students. My students especially praise Matthews and van Holde as a book which enables them to easily grasp even the most difficult concepts.
Rating: 4
Summary: Good survey text for someone with a year of biology
Comment: The simple fact of the matter is that, while not a classic on the level of "Molecular Biology of the Cell", this is a good introductory text. It is livened with examples of research applications, which keeps it from becoming a banal compendium of principles. On the other hand, it is relatively free from "gee whiz" fluff. It is not as quantitative as one might like, but some reviewers here have demanded a level of rigor which is inappropriate for classes full of pre-med students. A practicing structural biologist, for example, will invariably use a specialized reference for doing real work. To require too advanced a physical and chemical foundation for a book like Stryer's would be counterproductive. It provides a broad survey of biochemistry, rather than a deep discussion of particular topics therein.
I used this book in a self-study ("autotutorial") course for introductory biochemistry. The overwhelming reaction from people taking the course, including myself, was that the textbook was fantastic. I find it difficult to believe that a student with a decent background in organic chemistry and biology would have any trouble with this book; it is quite readable, although the chapters could be more coherently structured.
Overall, Stryer's book is more than adequate for an introductory biochemistry course, and its exposition is significantly better than most. None of the introductory texts I have encountered suffice as topical references for pursuits such as computational genetics or structural biology, so the question becomes, "is this a good biochemistry book to start with?" I submit that it is.
Rating: 3
Summary: One step forward, one step back from previous edition
Comment: OK, it seems that the new authors of the 5th edition actually took to heart soem of the amazon.com critiques of the 4th edition. The chapters are more structured, and the worst chapters of the previous editions have been completely overhauled. There is a modest increase in the amount of quantitative materrial, although its quality still cannot rival some other biochem textbooks targeting the same audience (e.g. the wonderful Mathews, van Holde and Ahern text).
The 5th edition also succumbed to a malaise common to most textbooks when they are taken over by a different set of authors: an absolute overkill of "new pedagogical features". Icons, boxes, keywords, conceptual insights, structural insights etc. belong well to a study guide, but here they just interrupt the flow of the exposition unnecesarily. The simplicity of layout and the illustrations was one of the strengths of previous editions, and it seems to be lost here.
Also, without questioning the importance of the structural data that accumulated over the past decade, I am very doubtfull of the pedagogical value of their extensive use to explain basic biochemical concepts: way too often they just add additional complexity that moots the point the authors are trying to convey. Just look at the figure 10.21 - without the accompanying animation, it is about the poorest (least illustrative) depiction of the T to R transition in hemoglobin I have ever seen.
Overall, it is an updated text that will please Stryer fans. Those using other textbooks (Mathews, Lehninger) will have no reason whatsoever to switch to this one.
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Title: Molecular Biology of the Cell by Bruce Alberts, Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, Peter Walter ISBN: 0815332181 Publisher: Garland Science Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $110.00 |
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Title: Student Companion for Stryer's Biochemistry by Lubert Stryer, Richard I. Gumport ISBN: 0716725606 Publisher: W H Freeman & Co. Pub. Date: February, 1996 List Price(USD): $75.75 |
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Title: Molecular Cell Biology by Harvey F. Lodish, Arnold Berk, Paul Matsudaira, Chris A. Kaiser, Monty Krieger, Matthew P. Scott, S. Lawrence Zipursky, James Darnell ISBN: 0716743663 Publisher: W H Freeman & Co. Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $126.40 |
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Title: Student Companion to Accompany Biochemistry by Stryer ISBN: 0716743833 Publisher: W H Freeman & Co. Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $41.75 |
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Title: Textbook of Medical Physiology (Textbook of Medical Physiology, 10th Ed) by Arthur C., M.D. Guyton, John E. Hall ISBN: 072168677X Publisher: W B Saunders Pub. Date: 15 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $78.95 |
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