Review:
I found this textbook “The Basics of General, Organic, and Biochemistry” very helpful for Health Science Major students who needs to under the basics of chemistry at the introductory level without going into too much details. The information provided here is enough, for students to get the basic foundation to chemistry with numerous practice problems on each chapter. The summary sections at the end of each chapter summarize each topic covered in the chapter, is very well written and is definitely a great help to students to prepare for their exams.
Content Accuracy/Organization: The content and the information provided inthis book is accurate but in my opinion is not properly organized. For example:
- I found that chapter 7 of this book should be after chapter 1 as chapter 7 has unit system on energy.
- The various topics in Chapter 9 are not properly arranged. For example, topic 9.7 Osmosis should be after topic 9.4 properties of solutions.
- Chapter 9 should be divided into two chapters (one on Solutions and second on Chemical Equilibrium).
- The topic chemical equilibrium started without any information on rate of reaction and the factors affecting the rate of reaction. In my opinion Introduction to Chemical rate is very important topic to understand chemical equilibrium thoroughly and should include in this book.
- Also, there are some topics in this book that started without provided enough background details. For example, chemical equilibrium.
- The section of organic chemistry is not very well organized.
Relevance: The information provided in this book is very relevant and up-to-date. However, for some topics the connections between a topic to the health sciences need updates over time to keep up with changes in the health professions.
Grammatical Errors: I did not see any error in the content.
Overall Comments: This is really a well written textbook, that helps students to save a lot of money (without cost for online version or a minimal cost, if they opt for a hard copy) especially for those who has financial constraints. I suggested this book in my course several semesters ago and my students seemed to like it. Now, I made this book as a required book for my GOB course.
