Customer Reviews

Atlas of Anatomy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This review refers to a second 2005 printing of this book: ISBN 1-902328-40-X.

I started reading this book (which I bought on sale at Border's), but only made it to page 14. At first I noticed the abundance of punctuation errors; there were periods missing from the ends of sentences, quotation marks in the wrong place, place names mispelled in one sentence but not in another, and so on. And these errors were everywhere! Then, on page 14, there is a paragraph near the end of the page that has several blank lines left to accommodate a sentence that was never finished being written! The incomplete sentence merely ends with several periods, as if prompting the author or translator to complete it, but it was never done. This book is not even a finished product! This is too bad, because having a historical section on "Discovering the Human Body" (this includes subsections on "The Origins," "In Rome," "The Renaissance," and so on) is unique and informative. Finally, (but less importantly) this book, edited by an editorial group in Italy, translated in the UK, and printed in China, is somewhat awkard to read. I am returning the book to Borders right away.

This "book" --draft is a better term -- was originally translated in 2002. Since then it has been reprinted nine times. This is rather shameful as the translation work is incomplete, and there are many errors in the text. Nevertheless, it does have one redeeming quality: beautiful, artistic illustrations. It only cost me $7.99 at Border's Books, so I am going to keep it. I also have better anatomy manuals on hand for reliable text.

If you seek a more reliable anatomy textbook with more perfunctory illustrations consider: Marieb's Anatomy & Physiology. If you seek a general reference for all audiences, consider the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book or Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary.

The reasons i kept this one were that i bought it for $8, and it has pretty good drawings. The text and labels contain a ridiculous amount of misspelled words, untranslated Italian, and layout flaws. If you can afford to buy another anatomy atlas, don't buy this one.

I bought this a few months ago to have a reference around, but just looked at it while trying to locate an artery in the head. According to this text, we have two vagus nerves, and one of them looks suspiciously like an artery. So I started looking through the rest of the book, and what a mess. It does have many great illustrations. But another reviewer mentioned using it for patient teaching, and I don't think it's accurate enough for that. This one's getting traded in.

I bought this based on the attractive illustrations ... it didn't occur to me to check the text because I never expected a book that was so poorly translated and edited; I never would have spent my money on this (I bought it used, fortunately) if I had taken the time to read even just one paragraph in it.

The book really does contain many beautiful, detailed, colorful illustrations. You can't go wrong if you buy it for thirteen cents (the lowest price as of when I'm writing this). However, it's full of incompetent and careless translations (the book was originally published in Italian) that make the information hard to digest and unreliable. The 'spinal cord' comes out translated as 'bone marrow', to give one example. Mummies were wrapped 'into' bandages. Many Italian words are left in Italian ('Alessandria', 'radice ventrale', 'vaso' to name some). The translator informs us that duodenal ulcers are '10 times more popular' than gastric ulcers ... this is great to know if I have a choice of ulcers ... and doesn't know the difference between the words 'lose' and 'loose'. As other reviewers have commented, there are hundreds of punctuation errors. The translator (or proofreader) seem to be clueless about the correct use of commas, colons, semi-colons and quotation marks in English.

Translating a complex book like this, which must be really spectacular in the original Italian, is a very complex and challenging task. The editors didn't do their job properly, and the result is disappointing and annoying. If you need a reliable anatomy reference, spend your money elsewhere.

I bought this book at Border's and remember thinking "Wow, what a great book and so cheap!" Well, my dad always said you get what you pay for. I have found error after error in this book. I'm very disappointed. I've been a medical transcriptionist for many years, but I bought this book to get better acquainted with the many bones, veins, arteries, etc. that I'm not familiar with. Surprising to me, I found I have a timpanic membrane (tympanic) and an etmoidal bone (ethmoidal). These are only a few of the errors I came across and I was only to page 43 of 240. I would be really pissed if I didn't know better and learned everything incorrectly and had to relearn it because of someone else's stupidity. DON'T BUY THIS BOOK!

This book has excellent drawings which seem to be very precise and anatomically correct, are useful to study. Unfortunately, many of the labels of the drawings are misspelled, pointing to the wrong places or simply wrong. The text overall is full of errors which mainly seem to be the result of mistranslations and lack of editing/proofreading.

For the money, I have yet to find a better book of anatomy illustrations. There is very little written education material so should be purchased mainly for the illustrations alone. This book is great for those who are just curious about anatomy as well as for someone in the health care field. It's particularly good for patient education.

I purchased this book for my daughter, she is 19 and taking classes for myofacial and aesthetician. She likes the book and easy to follow, helps her to understand different layers of epidremus. Lots of illustrations and language you can understand. I've purchased a more advanced book for my son for his pre-Med courses. He enjoyed it and said that the language in this one is a challenge, keeps him on his toes.
I have both myself, so that I can keep up with them and learn from them. Great books and would reccommend them to others.

M.Johns

I think this is a marvelous book. I bought it yesterday at Border's when it caught my eye on the bargain table. I am NOT a nurse and found it to be beautiful and informative. Well worth the marked down price (new) of $7.99. I highly recommend it for anyone--professional or non-professional. The illustrations are very in-depth.