Lippincott's Illustrated Reviews: Biochemistry, North American Edition (Lippincott's Illustrated Reviews Series),   ISBN:9780781769600

Customer Rating: 

I really like this text and found it to be a great supplement during the biochemistry course. It is also great for reviewing concepts for boards, expecially if it has been a while since you looked at biochem. My only problem is the price. When you start adding up board review sources, money flows from your pocket quite quickly. I did find a similar online resource at [...] that costs less than Lipincott's and offers access to good material. My advice would be to subscribe to the website I mentioned and use it in conjunction with a used (and thus cheaper) version of Lippincott's.

Customer Rating: 

After purchasing the biochemistry edition of Lippincott's series, I could not resist ordering the other two books, Pharmacology and Microbiology. The authors seem to get ahead of the game, by offering timely explanation when terminology gets obscure. For example, instead of footnoting the pages, notes are introduced within the paragraphs to complement the flow of thoughts.

The most impressive aspect of the book is the colorful illustrations that show the location of the various pathway reactions and involved reactants. The introduction of colorful graphics, bold font, and frequent notes did away with the austere feature of old teaching of biochemistry.

Great credit goes for the chapter summaries that were done in neat and outstanding design to aid the reader in grasping the main principals of each chapter.

Except of few typographic errors, the major draw back of the book is meager coloring of the atomic changing of molecules after reaction. In many instances, the reader is left to count and trace the new atoms that were added or removed from a molecule that made it different.

In addition, the book reliance on reactants' names, and not chemical formulas, in many spots of the book, challenges the reader's memory in figuring out what had taken place. Even though most of the named chemical reactants have their formulas in nearby pages, the dismissal of the chemical formulas of reactants in many pages, undermine the memorization process.

Do not count on finding extensive references or historical perspectives on how scientific discoveries led to such state of art of modern biochemistry. The authors merely portray an illustrated version of biochemistry for students, not researchers.

Customer Rating: 

Don't try to learn biochem off this book; it's just a review. But for review, it's good.

Customer Rating: 

The chapter summaries, diagrams and figures make this a great study aid for the MCAT. Very clear explanations, with diagrams, of difficult material. The presentation is straight forward and the book is well organized.

Customer Rating: 

It's a wonderful book to review Biochemistry especially for the National Board. It's amazing. This book makes all the confusion clears up.....