The control by the marketing division of publishing firms of nearly every aspect of the writing and production of textbooks for large-enrollment courses leaves only the slightest opening for originality or individual flair on the part of authors. One escape hatch is the preface, which in the present case calls upon Thomas Jefferson, perhaps uniquely for a text in general biochemistry, but reasonable (he spoke, we are told, of the "illimitable freedom of the human mind"), especially by two authors from the University of Virginia. Both Garrett, trained in biology, and Grisham, trained in chemistry, are active and respected practitioners of biochemistry. Their effort to meld their complementary backgrounds and interests in an exposition of the elements of biochemistry has produced a pleasing and generally successful textbook.

The organization follows the current rigidly enforced scheme, proceeding from molecular principles (Chapters 1, 2) through biomolecules (small and large, Chapters 3­10) and their functions (Chapters 11­16, enzymes and energetics) to metabolism (Chapters 17­27) and molecular genetics (Chapters 28­33). All normal matters under these headings are addressed with literate intelligence, wit, and the sympathetic understanding of good teachers.

Fortunately the topics include hemoglobin and myoglobin as the paradigm of allostery (a section and an appendix in Chapter 12 on enzyme specificity and allosteric regulation). Thus the hasty issue of a revised edition to satisfy those teachers whose notes can know no change, as occurred with the latest edition of another text that had the temerity to depart from the good, gray paradigm, will be unnecessary.

Quite extraordinarily, the text under review terminates on p. 1100 at the end of Chapter 33 (Molecular Evolution). There are five more chapters (Chapter 34, Self-Assembling Macromolecular Complexes; Chapter 35, Membrane Transport; Chapter 36, Muscle Contraction; Chapter 37, The Molecular Basis of Hormone Action; Chapter 38; Excitable Membranes, Neurotransmission, and Sensory Systems), apparently about 150 or so pages in length, marked in the table of contents as "published separately in a paperback edition entitled Molecular Aspects of Cell Biology." The purpose of excising a vital part of the text and publishing it separately is completely opaque and is nowhere explained. Presumably as a result, the words "receptor" and "neurotransmitter" do not appear as entries in the index of the main text. Not many courses will be taught without requiring the use of both the text and the so-called "supplement," and it is perverse to have divided them.

Besides in the preface of current textbooks, authorial creativity can also creep into view in the "enrichment" devices, here represented by "boxes" on historical points and recent advances and on special-interest topics (occasionally necessary to follow the text, however), as well as by references for further reading at the end of the chapters. The references are well-chosen, including both classic books and research articles (oddly few from the 1990s, which may reflect a lengthy production time for the textbook). In early chapters the references are given without comment, but later in the book, annotation becomes more common. The "boxes" are always good, sometimes fascinating, occasionally arguable (is "stumbles onto" the right verb for Pauling's discovery of the a-helix?) and rarely, a little odd (the similarity between the imidazole of histidine and the five-ring of purines as a suggestion of the RNA world).

Overall, Garrett and Grisham's Biochemistry is a very well-designed, well-written, attractive and useful textbook. The gambit of chopping off the last bit of the book and publishing it separately is strange and unfortunate.