Bioinformatics: Sequence and Genome Analysis (ISBN 0879696087)

Leaves something to be desired:
I took Dr. Mount's class at the U. or Arizona, and he's a really smart guy, but the man can't explain anything. It's not just his book either; his lectures are just as cryptic. I went to class thinking I understood the concepts, but then I got totally confused when he lectured. I would try to clarify things with the book, and again, I'd get even more confused. Someone who reviewed this book earlier said that he tends to use 10 words where he should use 1; I couldn't agree more. The figures in this book also need a major overhaul, and he should definitely include more examples of the many complex concepts he talks about. While I have no doubt that there is plenty of useful information in there, getting anything out of it is a chore. I would only recommend this book to someone who already had a strong knowledge of bioinformatics concepts.

A good book despite criticism:
I don't understand such a lot of bad comments about this book. In this book concepts are presented in an intelligent way, because the book is as quantitative as the biologist's requirements are. Everithing is sufficient to comprehend which are the things' mathematical basis but avoiding time-comsuming and ready-to-forget extra info. Other books are only for matematicians because they are sometimes full of numbers and complicated equations, while other ones are so simple that I imagine them usefull only for non-biologists (matematicians again above all). This is a book that is usefull as an introduction for the initial graduate level bioinformatician (biologist) and as a short description of the techniques that we use to matematicians aimed to collaborate. Finally I am not in agreement with some coments about what is Bioinformatics. Most of them carried out by some non-biologists here. Bioinformatics is Biology. Of course we use mathematics, but as far as we USE them, bioinformatics is not mathematics. We do not develope Mathematics, but Biology state of the art. Bioinspired algorithms, in the other hand, are pure mathematical concepts, even if they are insipred in biology. Let Bioinformatics be what it is, a quantitative and statistical part of pure Biology. This is a good book if you are not an expert in Bioinformatics but you have in mind to be one. Study this book entirely as your first one and go directly to the difficult ones. For me, it is the shorter reading path to bioinformatics expertise nowadays.

more challenging than trying to unravel the human genome.:
I used this book to teach a bioinformatics course in a foreign language because it was only one of two available in both english and chinese. I'm not sure it wouldn't have been less confusing to simply use a english textbook and let the students translate the text for themselves. To give the author credit, he has compiled an enormous quantity of information and made it available in a single location and that is no mean feat. At the very least, it is a valuable starting point to find both useful references to better explanations and software appropriate to almost any analysis you might want to do. On the downside, the prose is a tangled mess and is beyond comprehension in places. there are points where, even though i understand the underlying theories used throughout the book, i still couldn't figure out some of the examples used to illustrate particular methods. For example, there are some figures which have captions which run for a page and a half. Finally, in the majority of cases, the figures are taken directly from key papers on each topic, and associated explanations consist of sentences copied verbatim from the text. I may be doing the author a gross injustice here, but in many of the explanations, i was left with the same impression i get when reading students papers when they have copied something out of a textbook, without really understanding what is going on. Having said all of the above, i would still recommend taking a look at this book, but be ready to access the excellent list of references if you want a more insightful understanding of many of the methods described throughout.

One of the worst text-books I have ever read:
I used this book in an introduction level class to bioinformatics and it was worse then useless. The book is much more a survey of literature then anything else and so if you are not already very familiar with the topics the book does not provide enough details for you to get very far at all. Although to be fair most of the books on bioinformatics out at the time and the two years after were not much better, but I felt this was near the bottom of the pile. "Fundamental Concepts of Bioinformatics", ISBN: 0-8053-4633-3 when it came out was miles better, although even that book had tons of warts. If you are looking for a reference then this book is okay, but by the time I am writing this review you assuredly can find a more modern book. Part of the problem with books on bioinformatics is that, every book makes very different assumptions on your base level of knowledge of the various critical subjects needed: biology, chemistry, computer science and math. Most strike a pretty poor balance on the assumptions made and vary from way too basic to useless to anyone who is not already familiar with the field. My suggestion is to check out any book you are considering because how good the book is will vary greatly on your background.

Bioinformatics: Sequence and Genome Analysis by David W. Mount (Paperback):
Book is a good reference textbook for Bioinformatics. Of course the material covered is technical and dense, but that is unavoidable for the subject matter that the book covers.