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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Larsen's is an excellent textbook for students, January 4, 2004
By A Customer
I am research scientist (in neurobiology) and have used this textbook during a first-year medical school gross anatomy/embryology course and found it to be an extremely helpful companion to the instructor's lectures. I would highly recommend it to any instructor, medical student or resident, graduate student, or even to undergraduate Biology majors, although this book would probably be too advanced and technical for anyone else. I still have it on my bookshelf and it continues to be a handy reference for looking up answers to questions that come up. So, WHY do I Iike this book so much? Embryology can be a challenging subject because it involves learning not only about 3-dimensional aspects of anatomy etc but changes in those 3-D features over time. The most valuable feature of this textbook -- for me at least -- is the great number and quality of color illustrations along with lots of photo images from a variety of imaging technologies (scans, microscopic, etc). There is a limit to what authors can describe in words alone and this book proves the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. The writing is generally clear and concise, if a little dense at times due to the authors' strict adherence to a medical style of writing as well as medical terminology. Another helpful feature is the use of timelines in multiple parts of the book (intro, appendix, within chapters). Overall, the organization is pretty good: after the earliest milestones of development are covered, the chapters are then organized by organ or functional system, which means that successive chapters are often not in chronological order. Instead , adjacent chapters often discuss events that happen at different weeks, overlapping weeks, or sometimes during the same time-window. To some readers, this might seem like an odd way to organize things, but trust me it would be much more bewildering -- and practically impossible -- to do a chronological format and cover every system in each chapter, for instance in a chapter on "the 5th month", "6th month", etc. Brief mention of a few other features: 1) lots of "box" format descriptions of clinical disorders of embryological development at various stages (e.g. spina bifida), 2) includes some material on genetic and molecular biological aspects of development, 3) describes techniques used by researchers studying human and animal embryology. Cautionary note: this text deliberately does NOT emphasize any particular organ/functional system, since it's aimed mainly toward medical students. If, for example, you're looking for in-depth coverage of the developmental biology of the brain/nervous system, you'll need to find a more specialized book . Also, for readers who prefer verbal/text presentation and don't find visuals all that helpful, I'd refer them to a different book that I've used and also shows up in a search for "embryology" titles at Amazon.com -- "Langman's Human Embryology" by Thomas Sadler.
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