isbn0815341059

Reader' Reviews

Best textbook I've read / / 2010-06-08
Over the course of more than a decade of biology/engineering/medical degrees, this is the single best textbook I've read. It is current, authoritative, thoughtfully written, and wonderfully edited. Illustrations are usually helpful. This book was the foundation of a molecular biology course during the first year of my Ph.D., and it ignited my interest in molecular cell biology, which continues to this day.

The book targets an interesting audience. As a whole, it is a reasonably in-depth treatment on modern molecular and cell biology, and if the reader can grok half of the topics in the book, they are a legitimate expert. On some topics, the level of detail is only surpassed by current journal articles in the field. On other topics, usually the more mature topics where a chemical/physical interpretation is understood and meaningful, the level of discussion in this book can be somewhat superficial (e.g., computational methods, enzymatic mechanisms, chemical reactions, protein structure). I recommend this book to anyone with any interest in sub-cellular behavior.

A final note, that this book is edited by Alberts et al., but the bulk of the articles are contributed by colleagues around the world. I believe that the consistency of editing by biology experts combined with up-to-date articles written by topic experts is the key to the exceptional quality of this book. Well done!

The single best cell biology book ever written / / 2010-03-09
I am a biochemistry/biology grad student and I can tell you one thing: this is the single best cell biology book ever written. I used this book in multiple courses throughout my career, not only while in college, but also now I am a cell biology grad student. Since I started in college I have been using this book for looking up anything I came across regarding cell biology.

Not only that, but I also recommended this book to my family when they told me they were interested in understanding what I was dedicating my life to. It was so easy to read, my father (who is an accountant) told me he would have loved a pocket version so he could finish reading it. Truly, MBOC is the bible for med/bio science majors. I've seen myself return to this book so many times during my career that I can't count them.

The book is so great in many many ways. Figures are abundant, clear and concise (and you can even have them in CD, in Internet, Powerpoint, whatever!). Text is so precise and direct that you never have to go back and forth, back and forth reading previous chapters to understand new-ones. And bibliographic references. References are the most important thing in this book... they are so good, so carefully picked, they are really what makes this book a must-read even years after college.

A friend of mine who majored in informatics and is now working in the bioinformatics field asked me to tell him what book should he buy, cause he was having serious trouble understanding the bio part of his work. I recommended Albert's text-book. And I nailed it. Truly, the book is both entry-level and expert-appeasing at the same time.

However, this is a review for the 5th edition of this book, which I bought after my 4th edition book's covers tore apart. 5th edition is greater in every sense. They've updated everything, every chapter, and every reference. Even more, you have now more chapters, new figures, some chapters have been re-written to make them more understandable.

Bruce Alberts is one of the greatest american cell biologists of our time. He and his collegues have compiled the best up-to-date biology text-book you can find. I seriously recommend buying this book if:
- you are a bio/med major
- you are going to work with something related to biology (like bioinformatics, biophysics, biomechanics, etc.)
- you are interested in understading how nature works at the most simple organized level (aka the Cell)

Molec. Cell Book / / 2010-02-25
delivery was very fast... faster than expected. Books in good condition. Highly recommend this seller ^^

Very good / / 2010-02-20
It's very good, but the artist depictions and animated figures aren't too great. They're too complex than the actual data or point that is trying to be made. They spent too much time on some of them, making the reader have to spend too much time to understand it. And when this finally occurs, one is left confused about why a simple concept, or the presentation of data, etc... was presented in such a complex manner to begin with. The writing is good, no complaints, but somewhat along the same lines. Entire paragraphs can be reduced to one or two sentences; These may be a few reasons of why the book is so freaken big and heavy. However, I haven't come across a better Cell Bio text yet, so it's still tops.

David
Grad student of neurobiology

Molecular Biology Book / / 2010-02-08
book was shipped in a timely manner, i was satisfied with the condition of the book as well as the price.