Customer Reviews

Campbell's Physiology Notes

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If you don't want to read my REALLY LONG review about this author's phenomenal teaching style and impact on my Grade, then let me put it in nut shell for you right here in the beginning. I am a nursing student who was struggling with physiology and this author solved that problem for me right away.

This is the best physiology book. It's the best introduction to physiology; the most clearly written and easy to understand physiology book and the best "overview" of significant issues in physiology that I've encountered in my studies so far. It's a clearly written and easy to understand physiology book. If you have to study nursing. If you want to be a Physician's Assistant (PA) and MOST especially, If you've not taken sciences before or not been good at them and now need to take Physiology this is THE book to own. Whether you use it as a reference when doing reading in your assigned text, or you read it cover to cover you have to have this book on your bookshelf. I suggest however if you are going into the medical field that you do read it cover to cover. This author has some amazing physiology DVDs too not listed here. I don't think you are allowed to post a website here at amazon but go to google and type the word "campbellteaching" and make sure you get a website that has a United Kingdom or uk address. If you have never understood osmosis and diffusion then at a minimum it's worth ordering his DVD explaining these concepts as an addition to this book. The DVD is very fairly priced. Plain and simple this author's teaching style is CLEAR, CLEAR, CLEAR!

We've all spent 30 dollars in our life time on unnecessary stuff. Here is a great place to spend 30 dollars. This is the most reasonably priced compilation of valuable physiology information that I've found. My 180 dollar assigned text book did not get me thinking about and more importantly understanding many important and necessary physiology concepts until I first learned the basics from this author and then re-read my chapter.

Often times I come across a book on Amazon with either a glowing review or only a couple of reviews posted and I wonder if friends of the author posted that review. I admit I often ignore a product when it does not have too many reviews. I hope more people learn about this book and this author's DVDs and post here so that more people will have to opportunity to learn from this author with a great teaching style. THIS IS AN honest and true post! This author meant everything to me in my study of physiology.

Considering all the books I've been forced to buy (professor assigned) at great expense it's sad to say that only TWO books have been significant in impacting my understanding and my GRADE. This is book number TWO and you don't have to go broke to own it. Let's face it many text books are in position to get lots of reviews because they are assigned textbooks and so they get a lot of exposure. Oddly the two best books that I own, that actually affected my grade and helped me through my critical science requirements were sparsely reviewed because they were not assigned reading textbooks and so they lacked the exposure.

No book can be everything to everyone. I was a person who was changing careers to nursing with no science background. Each book has a target audience in mind. However if you are new to physiology, new to sciences, and maybe even more importantly, if you already took physiology but found that you did not walk away with the level of understanding you needed to be good in the rest of your related courses then you should own this text and refer to it when you need a refresher on the foundation of important physiology principles. Honestly if you don't have a sound understanding of physiology I'm not sure how you can do well in any medically related field.

Let me be clear here this book is a 400 plus page book so it can't include every detail that you might ultimately want. Obviously you need a 700 page, hugely expensive text book for that and we all have those in school. This book is INVALUABLE however because it does the following important thing: I don't know how this author did it but somehow he has mastered the art giving a student enough clearly written foundation, enough concisely written yet thorough foundational information, so that a student can then look up, read, and MOST IMPORTANTLY UNDERSTAND any in depth details that have to be read elsewhere. Personally, when I had a physiology reading assignment, I would first read this author's related chapter or watch the DVD from this author on the assigned topic. Getting a clearly written or explained foundation of the physiology principles from this author then made it possible for me to understand my assigned text.

As a side note: my expensive text had a fancy cover and incredible colored illustrations. Detailed illustrations are very important and we will all readily find them in our expensive text books. Do not be dissuaded by the lack of a fancy cover and fancy illustrations in this book. The gold mine in this book is how well the foundational stuff is explained and the non-fancy diagrams MORE than adequately illustrate what more importantly has been well explained. I can find fancy diagrams anywhere a good explanation is more important and harder to find.

Seriously I could keep going on about how this author's teaching style helped me do well in my class ; however this review would be even more endless than it is now. Let me just say one last less obvious thing. The order in which this book is arranged is ideal. My assigned physiology book ridiculously puts blood, the cardiovascular system that pumps it around and respiration all at the end of our book. This is insane because understanding how the other organs are functioning heavily relies upon an understanding of what the blood is doing and how it's transferring important chemicals and other stuff in and out of the cells and tissues that make up the other organ systems. Not to mention that this author is one of the few who is smart enough to recognize "pit falls" that the inexperienced student might fall into. So he often gives you a "heads up" and says don't confuse "this" with "that". The other really smart thing he did was dedicate several pages to making really important points about the liver. My text book made liver "references" all over the place and when you are tired and reading and the liver is only briefly mentioned in spots you don't realize how many critical metabolic activities the liver is performing.

Now here is my one criticism of the book. I wish this book had an entire chapter dedicated to cellular respiration/cellular metabolism. The reason is that the way this author writes I would much prefer to have learned this somewhat complex topic from him. I also wish there was a little more detail about membrane transport mechanisms, and about exactly how "receptors" for both neurotransmitters and endocrine chemicals function. Don't get me wrong this book does mention these issues but I would have liked more. This is less of a criticism and more of desire for the author to include this extra information in his next Edition of this already great book!

This is a superb physiology book! It ought to be available continually! With so many books (in almost all subjects), one gets the feeling that the authors are trying "show off" or look good in the academic community. That is not the case with this book. It is obvious that Campbell has written this book with the student in mind. Now, if you want an indepth book of physiology, if you want to read thousands of pages or want physiology in mathematical formulas this is not the book for you.

So who do I think will benefit? Any nursing student. Anyone who wants a solid yet not massive introduction to physiology. Anyone who is or intends to teach physiology (if not for content, for the superb presentation style). Anyone who finds physiology to be intimidating.

And what's so great about the book? Clear, conversational and relevant presentation! Instead of fancy photos and colour pictures (that often tend to confusion rather than clarity) the book is full of the author's own black and white simple drawings. Now this may seem primitive in todays multimedia world, but the simple drawings make the concepts easier to understand.

I have a weakness when it comes to books. I have bought lots of (too many) books, some bad some good and a few outstanding! On my bookshelf there are at least seven different modern physiology books (on different levels), but this is the best in its genre. It was worth every cent!

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