Customer Reviews

Biological Science 2nd EDITION

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

 

 

After acing Introductory Bio the previous year with Campbell & Reece's Biology, I returned this year as an undergrad TA for the same class. The professor had switched to this book, which is by far just a piece of crap next to the Campbell & Reece book.

This textbook seems to put too much emphasis on experiments done in the past that all the material is lost beneath piles and piles of experimental 'abstracts'. I once misunderstood the textbook, specifically on the differences between genes important in developmental biology, and ended up giving wrong information on a Q&A session. I ended up having to spend a lot of time tracking down every single person who had come to the session in order to let them know about the error.

Now I say Campbell & Reece is better because it makes better use of its diagrams and figures in order to clarify points made in the text itself. Freeman does not do as good of a job in this way. I guess it does a mediocre job of enabling you to delve out relationships between experimental results and conclusions that have been deduced from those experiments. But for one who is studying introductory biology I, I do not personally see the purpose of looking at experimental data just yet. With all the definitions and concepts that need to be understood first, the emphasis should not be as much on experiments than on developing concepts and throwing in experiments every once in a while.

I love biology and the book was a huge help in my lecture class this year. The layout flowed well from one section to the next, and from all the chapters we covered there was very little extraneous data. Everything we needed to know what contained in the chapters and detailed enough to understand the basic concepts. The study questions at the end of the chapter also helped with the basic understanding of the material.

The CD-ROM was extremely helpful with studying for tests or clarifying a chapter that was a bit confusing. For each concept there is a PDF worksheet, a pre-quiz, an animation with video and audio and text, and a post quiz. The CD-Rom was the biggest help in studying for my final, I'm more confident that I will pass because of this CD-ROM.

And on the web tutorial browser used, I had ZERO problems with the program working within my Mozilla Firefox browser. No Netscape needed.

The book isn't perfect for everyone. If your teacher strays from the book in lectures, you may need other sources to help clarify some concepts. My teachers never strayed farther than their own experiences in the field that were very closely related to the topics we were studying at the time. Most cases, the book will be all you need for raw information and the CD-ROM can help clarify a topic even more and help you study for your tests. Don't be afraid of the book, it's large but very much worth the money.

This book is great for an introductory collegiate biology student (and portions are even sufficient for higher level learning). It is very comparable to other "standard" Biology textbooks (ex. Campbell and Reece). I highly recommend this publication.

This is the worst bio book I have ever read. There are not enough diagrams, and the author focuses too much on the history of discoveries as opposed to the actual discoveries. I wanted to rank this book a 0/5 but that was not an option. The book was so horrible that a majority of the time, I could not read it...I thought it was extremely dull and dry...And I normally love biology!!! My professor wanted us to use the Reece Biology book, but the department would not approve it, so we got stuck with this cr@p. If you're looking for a good biology textbook, this book is not for you. Compared to the Reece book, the Freeman book makes you feel like you are reading each definition on each page in the dictionary and are being forced to memorize it. I had the opportunity to read a chapter or two of the Reece book, and I can tell you that it is 1000X more interesting and readable than this Freeman book.

This book is definitely worth the money. I am the type of person who learns better from reading than listening to (mostly) boring lectures. For that type of person this book is perfect. It is one of the best science books I've ever used.

The main thing to say about this book is that it is very readable. The chapters are relatively short (15-25 pages) and are broken up into nice length subsections. The illustrations only help to understand concepts introduced in the text.

I think the book does a great job of what it intended to; Give a good introduction to a very broad range of biological subjects without sacrificing the details.

product was charged to my account, i never received it, i tried to email the person about their refund policy and i never got a reply.