Essential Cell Biology- Second Edition Description:

Essential Cell Biology, Second Edition review:
4 stars (Pretty Good and Basic) - This text is actually really good for beginners or as a refresher. Full of info and very detailed.
3 stars (Usefull illustrations, but it didn't help much for class) - After taking my first course in cell biology I discovered a number of things about the subject. 1) Cell Biology is a HARD CLASS! In my class, we covered about 18 or so chapters of material. Tests were based mostly on memorization of both relevant and obscure facts as well as many, many molecular processes. For someone that is pressed for time and tries to cram before tests, there will be problems. 2) It is difficult to understand many of the processes in cell biology without some chemistry background. When I took the class, I was also in organic chemistry 2, but that didn't help much. If I could have done it over again, I would actually take Biochemistry before Cell because processes in Cell Biology are explained briefly and mostly independent of the chemistry involved, which forces the student to memorize information without really understand why these processes occur. 3) In general, Biology is becoming more problem based and in order to understand cell, you need to have solve useful questions.



Based on the inherent difficulties of Cell Biology that I have mentioned, I don't think that this book did much to bridge any of these learning gaps. The molecular processes were explained briefly which was ok, but since there was so many of them, it was still hard to manage. The chemistry of cell biology in this book is poorly explained. Chemical structures are largely discarded in favor of acronyms. Obvisously, acronyms are favored for the long run, but a firm understanding of the chemical structures needs to be understand first. In my opinion, this book relied too much on acroynms.



Finally, the questions in this book were terrible. Some were just inane (Compare signs of life for a rock and a plant) while others were just pointless (Calculate something or the other). Also, there were many problems that I was just clueless to even though I had read the information in the book. These problems asked what would happen if some molecular process was somehow disturbed. Obvisouly, questions of this nature are essential in understanding cell biology, but the book did not provide enough information to come up with a feasible answer. In my opinion, this book should be much more problem based and should have fair problems that are able to be solved, and there should be a student solutions book available that provides clear explanations to all questions.



This book was decent for basic concepts, but not really useful for really understanding the subject matter. I would recommend looking for a different text, even if this is the required text for your class.
3 stars (Book Does Not Make the Grade) - I have read a good number of science texts, and this one just doesn't seem to be as good as the others. The explanations are adequate, though not to the level that Marieb's Anatomy and Physiology was or to the extent of Biology by Campbell and Reese. In class, the professor told us to refer to Campbell and to "Molecular Biology of the Cell" for better explanations.



The glossary is incomplete, and often key terms are just nt there. The index suffers from the same trouble, even when the chapters address the topic. Lastly the graphics, just don't seem to be as well planned as those in the texts mentioned above.



I understand that many do not have a choice given that most buy the book as an assigned text. My recommendation, therefore, is to save your old textbooks and to ask that your professor place a copy of Molecular Biology of the Cell on reserve at your school library.