Neurobiology, 3rd Edition

an aesthetic one. Stryer's diagrams, by way of contrast, provide more valuable information and are of a more consistent quality while being clear and easily interpretable. In addition, the price of $76.95 is higher than other comparable biochemistry texts (for example, Stryer's 4th Edition is $69.95), although the additional cost might be warranted for those requiring both detail and comprehensiveness. The book is organized into five logical sections: "Introduction," "Biomolecules," "Mechanisms of Enzyme Action," "Metabolism" and "Expression and Transmission of Genetic Information." The introductory section could be omitted since most of the material in these three chapters will be review for most readers. The Metabolism section provides the meat-and-potatoes biochemistry that such textbooks are primarily about, so it is here that the question of style, depth, readability, diagrams of pathways and use of additional graphics is most significant. Metabolic pathways are presented in diagrams that are complex and often difficult to follow, complete with details of the electrochemistry of reaction mechanisms (i.e., the movement of electrons and the attack of one portion of a molecule on another in various steps for many of the pathways). While this might be interesting to those specializing in a related field, it is not very helpful for learning the pathways themselves. The dense, two-column format of the text was particularly troublesome in this section. One byproduct of the comprehensive scope of this text is that some of the chapters are in an awkward location; for example, a chapter on "Techniques of Protein Purification" seems to have been somewhat arbitrarily inserted between the chapters on "Amino Acids" and "Covalent Structures of Proteins," in that this topic does not fit well with the surrounding chapters although it does provide useful information. Given the large proportion of potential readers related to or interested in the medical field, we found there to be relatively few examples of the application of biochemistry to medicine, and those that we found were often relegated towards the ends of chapters. Each chapter ends with a brief, well-written summary and with a number of problems, the solutions to which can be found in the companion Solutions Manual to Accompany Biochemistry by the same authors. The index, like the rest of the book, is detailed, but it is not without problems. For example, only one page reference is given for the steroid hormone aldosterone, although it appears in an equally important context in another part of the text. There is no glossary. In summary, Biochemistry is probably best suited as a reference text for people requiring a comprehensive resource for the basic science of biochemistry, but it would not be my choice for an undergraduate or medical school text, where there is a need to make a vast and complicated subject accessible and relevant to the needs and developing intellectual repetoire of the student new to the subject.