Biology - Life on Earth (7th Edition) Description:

Biology : Life on Earth (7th Edition) review:
2 stars (Book for high school, not worth the money) - This book goes into explaining Hardy-Weinberg principle and doesn't even have the equation for it! Nor does it mention two important words in the same chapter - dominant and recessive. If you want to look at pictures of animals and read over-simplified explanations then buy it. If your are looking for a scholarly book, then I would suggest to look elsewhere.
3 stars (Too much "fluff") - The major problem with this book is that there is so much unnecessary paragraphs which can just be said in a couple of sentences. This book is only good for those who have major trouble grasping the concepts and are in need of a mass amount of analogies and metaphors. If you are looking for a Biology book straight to the point, this is not for you; a better book is "Inquiry into Life" by Sylvia S. Mader. Once I read "Inquiry into Life," I found that "Biology: Life on Earth" was too drawn out. It is also not as detailed as I had expected it to be.
4 stars (An excellent introduction to biology!) - (Note: This review refers to the fifth edition of this book.) The authors of Biology: Life on Earth have written a beautiful, fairly comprehensive but not overwhelming introduction to the subject of biology. Although I have a bachelor's degree in biology and a master's in botany and found the book to be straightforward and clear, it is written so well and in such an engaging and conversational style that it should also be straightforward and clear to anyone who is new to biology. The colorful photographs and detailed diagrams add to the beauty of the book. I also like the feel of the pages.

Many introductory biology books nowadays are quite heavy and bulky, and there is so much information in them that it is sometimes hard to get the "big picture." But this particular book is able to get the main aspects of biology conveyed in a more compact size. ( Some biology textbooks can be upwards of 1200 or more pages long, but this book gets the job done in less than 900.)

This is the textbook I would most recommend to someone who is just starting to learn the details of biology. Other biology books, such as those by Campbell, by Raven, and by Solomon et al., are more comprehensive and perhaps are better as reference books than this one might be, but their details can overwhelm the beginner.

I gave this book four stars, not five, for two reasons. First, as with many textbooks, there was at least one incorrect statement. It said on page 74 that potassium, sodium, and calcium ions are molecules, when in fact they are simply charged atoms, not molecules. Second, and this criticism may be biased because I like biochemistry, the book could have included the molecular structures of all twenty amino acids, not just a few. Similarly, the book could have included the molecular structures of the chemicals participating in glycolysis and the Krebs cycle, and giving the molecular structure of the key molecule involved in photosynthesis, chlorophyll, would have been nice. These small but helpful additions would have added perhaps only two pages to the length of the book.

Overall, though, I am very impressed by this book and wish I had had a book like this when I first began to study the details of biology. Enjoy it!