Customer Reviews

Genetics: From Genes to Genomes

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a good book if you already have a foundation in genetics. Oddly, the book is marketed as your basic undergrad genetics text. Yet instead of just explaining the concepts, it leads you on the path of discovery of how researchers figured all this stuff out. If you are still learning the subject, you may do better with Klug/Cummings/Spencer. If you are going into higher levels of biology and want to learn some research methods, this is a good book.

I found this book extremely verbose and unorganized. It would serve as a great reference book for a lab researcher or grad student. But it's way too technical and dense for an introductory genetics class. The authors do a poor job presenting the material in a comprehensible way to an undergraduate genetics student. Not recommended.

I think this is a great text book for General Genetics class! In fact, this is the text we have been using at UC Berkeley.

The authors are not only clear & concise in delivering their topics, but also able to formulate challenging questions to test students' undestanding.

This book is decent. It seems like it could be used in a lower-level undergraduate genetics class. One good thing is that it includes the answers to odd problems in the back of the book (it would be better to have the answers to every problem). One bad thing is that the answers in the back of the book are not exact -- it seems like the authors used decimals in their work and carried the rounding errors into the final solution. For instance, an answer like 3/4 will sometimes appear as 0.746. In some cases, two parts of the question should have the same answer, but again, they vary due to rounding errors. This was confusing to me at first and is the main reason why I wrote this review.

Also, this book is way too expensive for what you get. Most of the material in this book is covered in [better] books that you will use later in your studies (i.e. The Molecular Biology of the Cell). If you can avoid buying this book new, then it might be a good deal. Otherwise, save your money because it is not worth it (ask your teacher if you can use a different book for the class -- in many cases, this will be acceptable).

This book is used in my undergrad genetics class and I don't think it should be. The text is way too difficult to understand and it is also very dense for an intro class. The way sentences are worded on the chapter problems problems are confusing. I often find myself reading the same problem 5 times before attempting to answer it. My professor even had trouble understanding what some of the questions are asking.

This is a thorough and helpful textbook. I would recommend it for those interested in in-depth explanations of the biology of genetics.

I very much liked this book. It has some of the best illustrations and photomicrographs that I have ever seen in a science textbook. The organization of the book is pretty good too. I enjoyed the background material on methods and thought the length of the book was just right. More is not always better. The only minor gripe I had was that the photomicrographs are not labeled by type (i.e., SEM, TEM, Confocal, etc.). There is a huge amount of research in the genetics area that others might have stuffed into this book, but the authors wisely chose to limit their scope somewhat.

This is a must-buy if you're going through the textbook questions and don't already have a solutions manual. It has clear explanations for all the answers and is just a really handy study tool when you get stuck on that one question..
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Pretty much what you'd expect a solution manual to be. It explains the answers to all questions (not just odds or evens). Very helpful when studying if you get a question wrong and don't know why. If you're finding genetics slightly challenging like I am it is a good study aid!

This book has proven to be a fantastic way to introduce genetics to students who have no knowledge whatsoever of genetics to some with basic knowledge as well as those with extensive knowledge! The chapters continually get harder (like any other text book) and the example problems are amazing! Very thorough and easily thought-out, not a quick answer! They definitely take time to think through and discuss options with other classmates! I'm extremely glad that my professor chose this text book! I'm thoroughly enjoying it!