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| | General, Organic and Biological Chemistry |  | Authors: Michael S. Matta, Antony C. Wilbraham
Publisher: Benjamin-Cummings Pub Co
Category: Book
List Price: $47.00
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $46.99 (100%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 6376524
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 2nd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 838
ISBN: 0805396306
Dewey Decimal Number: 540
EAN: 9780805396300
ASIN: 0805396306
Publication Date: January 1986
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: TEXT BOOK. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED SAME DAY SHIPPING.
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| Customer Reviews:
An adequate overview but with little theory. April 4, 2006
Having gotten interested in biology, I found that I needed more
chemistry background. I found an earlier edition of this book in
a used book store. It was cheap, not too difficult, and on
topic, so I bought it and read it from beginning to end.
The book is aimed at students of nursing and allied health
sciences. It tries to give a broad rather than a deep knowledge
of the descriptive chemistry of the biological reactions that
occur in the human body. The general chemistry in the
introductory chapters is intended to provide some background for
the organic and biological chemistry that follows, so that the
reader will understand the concepts of atomic structure, bonding,
concentration, acids and bases, oxidation, and so on.
In its favor, I must say that the book really does cover many of
the important chemical reactions. I'm not the best judge of
this, but as far as I could tell, it covers them accurately. The
reader will learn important material and will get a broad
introduction to the subject.
The book's main drawback in my opinion is that it gives too
little theory, and what it does give is not well applied. There
is a chapter on electron orbital theory, but no use is made of it
in the rest of the book. Key concepts like oxidation and
reduction are explained very briefly. We learn that some
chemical bonds are highly energetic and some are not, but we
don't really learn why. The complex catabolic pathways of sugar,
fat, and protein metabolism are covered in as much detail as
space permits, but the reader comes away with a very limited
understanding of the mechanisms that drive these reactions.
We never learn why hydrolysis and dehydration synthesis, two
of the most important types of reaction in the cell, are so
ubiquitous in organic reactions.
There are typically 8-12 questions embedded in the text of each
chapter, with answers in the back of the book. Each chapter is
also followed by several dozen more questions - often very good
ones and very well organized. Unfortunately however, there are
no answers printed in the book. I would have liked to see
answers in the back, or at least answers to every other question.
But I guess you have to buy the separate study guide to get that.
I would also have liked a more extensive glossary.
It's not a bad book. I did find it useful. It has allowed me to
move to the next stage of my study of biology (Alberts' Molecular
Biology of the Cell). But I'll need to study more chemistry
elsewhere to give me the theory I need.
Lastly, I'll note that the edition I read was inexpensively
produced. It used black and white plus one color. To my aging
eyes that one color was not the best choice since I had to peer
hard to distinguish the blue symbols from the black ones in some
of the chemical formulas (but that might be my personal problem
only.) There are very limited illustrations compared to the more
expensive books. But the illustrations it has are reasonably
well chosen and the chemical equations are copious and useful.
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