BOOKS BRIEF

Book's "essay-type" format. Illustrations are ok, but nothing to write home about. Biosynthetic pathways, for example, are squeezed onto one page with very small print. Sometimes these diagrams are so "busy" that it takes more effort than should be necessary to untangle the important concepts, and quite frankly, is simply uninteresting to look at.Conversely, Lippincott has wonderfully full-coloured illustrations that are professionally drawn, easier to understand, get to the point, and are visually interesting.

Besides the great illustrations, the text throughout Lippincott is consistent, clear, and concise. Topics in each chapter are broken down in easy to digest sub-topics and the entire text book is superior in its organization compared to Harper's (which is basically a compilation of essays).
Important concepts stand out and crucial information is not couched as it is in Harper's. However, like I said, if your background in biochem is strong, then you already know

what is important and Harper's may well suit your needs. My suggestion is: if you have a strong background in biochemlesson from this whole Madoff fiasco, in my opinion, is the importance of understanding the strategy. If you can understand how a trading or investing strategy makes money – the guts of how it really works, good and bad, warts and all – then you can also understand the risks. The most robust trading and investing strategies are logical.

They don’t take rocket science or complicated math or a PhD in physics to understand. And yet, Madoff’s investors didn’t apply this simple rule of thumb. They took his explanations at face value, even when those explanations didn’t make sense. The strategy was laid out in simple fashion, but the returns literally didn’t add up. A few savvy investors, knowing the official line had to be bogus, figured Madoff must have been doing something he didn’t talk about... maybe even something illegal... but they figured it was no problem as long as their profits were safe. Call that the most cynical trade of all. My one hope from all this is that the Wall Street love affair with silky-smooth returns and artificial stability comes to an end (or at least goes into remission for a good long while). On a larger scale, we run into the same type of “smoothing” problems when our government tries to iron out the natural fluctuations in a free market economy. And what bigger Ponzi scheme exists than social security... but I’d better end here before going too far down that road. The sooner we realize there’s no free lunch – and no such thing as investing without healthy ups and downs – the better off we’ll be.states that Madoff himself has "a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing, and high ethical standards that has always been the firm's hallmark."