10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very nice if you hate Langman., December 13, 2007
This review is from: Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects With STUDENT CONSULT Online Access, 7e (Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology & Birth Defects) (Paperback)
UAMS listed
Langman's Medical Embryology as our required embryo book. I hate Langman with a passion, as you can tell in my review of it. It is poorly written, contains less than useful 2-D figures making it difficult to visualize morphologic changes, and contains at least two errors in every single chapter (and I'm not talking about minutia; it's errors big enough that our lecturers have to mention them in class). So, I began searching for an alternate embryology book that covered the material in about the same depth as Langman. This is it. This book is concisely and CLEARLY written. It also contains more figures, and these figures have a 3-D feel to them that make embryology much more understandable. Also, it appears to have vastly fewer errors. If your medical school requires Langman, by all means get Langman. Many of my classmates find the book an enjoyable read, and this book isn't a Langman clone, so the information each book contains is slightly different. The author (Moore) is also the author of
Clinically Oriented Anatomy (5th Edition), and he correlates embryologic structure to adult anatomy more than Langman, which I enjoy. But if you have Langman, hate it, and need a supplement, this delivers in spades.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good choice for coursework and review, April 15, 2010
This review is from: Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects With STUDENT CONSULT Online Access, 7e (Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology & Birth Defects) (Paperback)
"Before We Are Born" is an excellent introduction to embryology, particularly in comparison to "that other book" (Langman, my assigned text in medical school). Langman spends more time with molecular biology, while Moore & Persaud tend to gloss over the molecular aspects in favor of describing the etiology and appearance of various malformations (which is probably more clinically relevant, and to me, much more interesting!). This book is well-written and not too long (about 300 - 350 pages); if you prefer prose format over outline (like I do), this might make a good choice for USMLE review.
Unlike some of the other reviewers here, I was not taken with Moore & Persaud's illustrations. True, they are colorful and NUMEROUS (which definitely helps!). Still, embryology is, by necessity, highly visual and three-dimensional, and I often had trouble translating the cartoonish illustrations into a three-dimensional image.
This probably sounds like a major criticism, so you may wonder why I still gave it four stars. The writing is conversational and concise, largely making up for my problems with the images; and in any case, Langman's illustrations aren't any better (and there are far fewer), so it might just be the inherent difficulty in trying to illustrate such a complex topic. There are also tons of free embryology videos available online; so, whenever I had trouble visualizing a particular process in development, I looked up a relevant video online, which usually gave me the last little "push" into comprehension.
All in all-- highly recommended for coursework and review, especially in conjunction with online resources.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Moore's Textbook on Embryology, November 2, 2010
This review is from: Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects With STUDENT CONSULT Online Access, 7e (Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology & Birth Defects) (Paperback)
Moore's Textbook on Embryology is the best text I have found that describes the develpoment of the human embryo/fetus. The text is detailed and the pictures support the text very well. I would recommend it for anyone studying human development in utero
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