[.ca] Oxford Dictionary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ISBN 0198529171)

Every Definition you'll need:
Great for Science majors, all the definitions or words you used to know but can't remember from class to class. Very thorough. much better than a textbook glossary.

keep handy when you're trawling through science literature:
As someone involved in biochemical research, I spend loads of time reading a variety of life science journals. Just keeping up with the latest research is hard enough, but as my areas of interest become ever larger and intermeshed with other disciplines such as medicine and physics, I've found myself delving into this book more and more. But the pace of research is also a problem for a book like this, because to remain useful, new editions cannot appear fast enough to keep up with the latest batch of techniques, genes and proteins. Ultimately an Internet version of this book that gets updated on a regular basis would be the most useful. Never the less, once you get in the habit of using this dictionary, you'll want to keep it nearby when you're browsing the life science literature. Is this book good value? I think it's expensive compared to all other books, but well priced for an academic textbook. I find that using this book is still more rapid and direct than browsing the web for the definition of a word I don't know, and the brief definition given in this book is a good starting point for hunting down more detailed information.

FAIR: DEPENDING ON YOUR NEED:
This revised edition of "Oxford Dictionary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology" is comprehensive, clinically relevant, and fairly up-to-date. It has a good coverage (for degree students), although that advanced researchers may need something more extensive. Its ability to correlate biochemical terms and data is appreciated. But with just over 17,000 definitions, its listed price is a bit on the high side. Buyers could get a better illustrated, more voluminous Biochem dictionary at that price.