general

As a medical student studying pharmacology for class and for the USMLE, I have found this book to be very helpful. It makes a good reference as well as a good review book. The pictures are very helpful, and the text summarizes the most important information. They include many drugs with concise descriptions.

This is a good book for every one. I am a high school student with a job as a pharmacy tech. I am most of the way though my Bio H class of sophmore year but with a dictionary and online websites for little help this book can teach you everything
most chapers include:
a slight review on the body system that the drug affects such as the first few chapter have to do with cholinergic drugs on the nervous system followed by a few paragraphs about each drug what it does, what is used for theriputically and adverse affects, also there is some times an antidote. if you are looking for a good book stop because this is easy to undersand and has a ton of information
-Andrew

I used this text to prepair for the boards, having already read Katzung's Pharmacology in class. This is a concise book, uniform, with many illustrations (many of them however could easily be omitted, since they simply present drug adverse effects graphically), and does a good job in selecting the prototypical drugs from each class. It could be a lot more complete in the section on CNS pharmacology, and on drugs for heart failure and hypertension (for example, it is stated that beta-blockers are contraindicated in heart failure, whereas it is well-known that this kind of drugs is essential for reducing mortality and hospitalizations in these patients). I particularly liked the section on antimicrobial chemotherapy, another high-yield topic for the boards. I have a positive overall impression of the book, but I found myself consulting Katzung more than often; also, it does not compare to the clearly superior Lippincott title on Biochemistry (keep in mind however than biochemistry lends itself much more easily to illustrated presentations than pharmacology). It will help you, but in order to top the exams, you will need an additional resource.