Customer Reviews

Human Development: A Life-Span View

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I purchased the kindle edition. The only issue I have had with this edition is that the charts and tables are difficult to view. When using the kindle, you can not zoom in close enough to read the charts without squinting. When I view that charts on kindle for PC it is a little easier to read but still pretty difficult.
Overall it is a good text book, but if you are considering purchasing the kindle edition, I would not recommend it.

This book is terribly organized, confusing, frequently out-dated and flat out boring.

As a graduate student in psychology, I returned to retake a course on human development that used Kail's text. Reading this thing is an absolute CHORE! It is written and organized VERY inefficiently! The information is scattered throughout in bizzare ways. For example, instead of organizing ethnic lifespan differences by ethnicity, Kail scatters this information disjointedly throught the text, so you have to hunt it down sentence by sentence if you want to actually write on the topic or answer questions. Adding to this is the frequently incomplete topical index, as well as omissions from the "names" index. By the time I got the last few chapters I had just about lost patience with this book; it is easier to simply use google to scan abstracts from studies on the topics. Incidentally, this would provide more accurate and up to date information, as many of the studies the book cites are more than a decade old and disputed.

Adding to these frustrations is the general tone of the book which neglects many of the more interesting topics for undergrads and instead provides annoyingly cliched 'vignettes' which open and close the chapters. "Mary is curious about xxx behavior (which is focus of chapter)." Rather than enticing the reader, they dissuade him. They are flat out boring and stereotypical and another component which clutters this disorganized mess of a text.

As if these aspects weren't enough, the online component has errors ranging from missing choices to misspellings, as well as many 'correct' answers that are, at best, ambigous. Terrible! If you love psychology and value both your time and sanity, avoid this text!

I was interested in taking a course on human development (developmental psychology) and I did some research on the Internet. This book came up in a couple of forums and in random searches, so I came here to Amazon to buy it. Turns out that it was not only a good choice, but a good investment. There's a lot of research that went into making this book the goldmine that it is; especially for someone who wants to know more about the topic. It's obviously written for a college course, but if you are self-directed, you can get the full educational value of this publication and have a junmp-start on course work like I did.

overall I thought that this was a very interesting textbook, which is so very often NOT the case. I ended up reading the whole thing, even though it wasn't required in the class. The biggest area that this book lacks in is the special challenges that LGBT face in their lifespan development. The authors would do well to include more information on this subject matter (suicide, dating, family challenges, parenting, risk to LGBT seniors).

It's pretty poor that this is offered for the iPAD but not the KINDLE FIRE. You would expect Amazon to support its own device.

I received my book at the beginning of my fall semester and it seemed fine, but on my final chapter to read for the semester I found that 4 pages were ripped out of the book. I paid $96.99 for this book and it was listed in very good condition. I rate this as extremely poor quality product that the seller should have marked way down for the damaged condition of the book. Do not buy from this seller.

This book was in better condition then expected, shipped quickly and arrived ontime. I will definitely order books from them again in the future and recommend them to friends & family.

got it for a Uni subject, but it's among the most interesting of academic literature I've come across. Really useful book if you're working with young people and/or involved in a counselling role. highly recommend this book.

Received my item quicker than expected, was in perfect condition. I was very satisfied, and would purchase from here again!

This has been my worst experience with Amazon. I couldn't just believe that it's been More than a month now and I've still not received my book and neither was the money refunded back to me. I'm very much disappointed with the sellers.