Biology for Dummies

Rating:
Summary: Wow! Great review of core bio and chemistry concepts...
Review: Donna does an awesome job of reviewing/explaining every concept from biology that I could think of. I took 2 bio college courses years ago and am going back to school and will be taking some advanced biology courses. I think I now understand the primary concepts better than I did while I was enrolled in the bio courses. I would recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A good book for making biology easier.
Review: I found this book easier to understand then my regular required college biology textbook. Chapters on evolution and ecosystems were very interesting to me. I also would reference this book when I came across a hard topic in my college bio textbook. Donna Rae Siegfried does a good job of explaining hard topics into simplier forms to understand. I also highly recommend
The Ultimate Study Guide for Biology: Key Review Questions and Answers with Explanations
Volume 1 isbn;1933023007
Volume 2 isbn;1933023015
Volume 3 isbn;1933023023
These three books were so good for helping know the type of questions to get ready for in my college biology I and II tests. These four books were a definite assets to helping me get very good grades in my biology classes.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat helpful, but sloppy
Review: Some useful simplifications here, but an inexcusable amount of factual errors for a science book. And way too many unwanted attempts at humor.


Rating:
Summary: Arrrghhhhhhh!
Review: The 'science of life' is a wonderful, exciting, expanding area of knowledge. "What's not to love?", as they ask. When a book like this is promulgated, with the stated purpose of making complexity attainable to those with less than advanced degrees in the physical/biological/health sciences, it is expected that the facts, analogies, histories, conceptualizations, etc., be, well, CORRECT. (Can you hear me screaming?) There are so many errors in this book that I have decided to keep it: an exemplary star that brilliantly illuminates one more reason we (ah'm a 'merican)are losing the "science-math battle". I sat in my livingroom, opened the always eagerly-anticiptated package from Amazon, and began to peruse. In three minutes, my wife asked me what was so funny that I was laughing so hard. This is not made up! I am far from being a 'genius', but I do have significant degrees and experience in physiology, biophysics, microbiology, etc., including teaching "at the college level" - see the 'Dummies'author's CV. Even that quoted expression is somewhat disingenuous - college level where? Harvard? Berkeley? Mt.Mesmer pre-junior college? Trust me - if you want to learn basic biology - buy another book - there are lots of them out there. Since I only have 1000 words to write this, I can't list all the errors, although I would guesstimate that there are at least ten times more than enough to fill my quota of words. This estimate is not mere hyperbole - I mean it. I'll give you a few examples: first, a glaring example in both conceptualization and history. The author spends some time decrying, or maybe, complaining about, or maybe just has some dark, recondite resentment of Watson and Crick. She creates (somewhat fatuously, I thought) a 'tempest in a teapot' by informing us "Dummies" that Watson and Crick weren't the ones who 'discovered' DNA (duh!), and implies that their Nobel prize (for one of the most pivotal contributions in the history of our kind)was somehow not really deserved - she goes back to Miescher's work, which of course was contributory in identifying the "substance that had something to do with heredity" (my own quotes). Lotsa folks worked on DNA before W&C, including, contemporaneously, twice-Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling. That ain't the point. The author misleads the naive reader. That's what's so bad about this whole book - the author doesn't seem to know enough about the subject(s) to present complex ideas in simple terms that DO NOT DISTORT the FACTS. This, of course, requires considerable talent and MORE THAN SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUBJECT. Years ago, I was fortunate enough to hear Dr. Linus Pauling lecture on protein chemistry. It was the clearest, most simply explicated lecture I ever heard on the subject- he UNDERSTOOD his proteins!Anyway, W & C got their Nobel for ELUCIDATING the STRUCTURE of the molecule, and, in the last sentence of their seminal paper, SUGGESTING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SUCH A STRUCTURE IN REPLICATION.(Another big "duh" here) The author coulda/shouda used the same space to show how biological science - like others - grows in small quanta and giant leaps. Missed the boat with a kinda carpy mish-mash of somehow interrelated facts that sum to a generally misleading presentation. Check out CO2 transport- the author gets it almost right with hemoglobin but totally blows it wrt phosphoric acid - I just don't have space to go into all that.(But the book does have the space - and blows it!) Additional factual and conceptual errors are NUMEROUS - I haven't even mentioned the dangling participles, verb-subject mismatchs, awkward constructions,and a legion of cutesy-artsy misguided and misleading flimflamfoolery, which does more to annoy and obfuscate than to enlighten and explicate. Buy this book if you know some biology and enjoy shaking your head in wonder at what can get published in today's market. I am going to buy the author's anatomy and physiology dummie's book. Why? Because I suspect it will be just as, if not more, amusing to the reader who enjoys a science book or two on his "humor" shelf, or a volume or two of humor on his science shelf. Wiley should find a good science editor/writer/SCIENTIST to edit this science editor's writing, and hey, I mean LINE editing. There are several somewhat superfluous (Ok, Ok, the alliteration is a little overdone...) illustrations, and a lack of illustration where a simple diagram or drawing would be worth...er...a thousand words, which is about my limit here. Dummies of the world, unite! This book is Wiley's bad!

Rating:
Summary: Biology for Dummies
Review: This book is okay for someone who is not looking for much detail, however, the writing style is reminiscent of a really campy (and likewise bad) B movie. It is halfway decent as a review if your biology knowledge has gone without use for a while, but that is only if you are capable of plodding through all of the inane asides, overuse of the word "bugger" and rather unnecessary comments that the author may have added to inject humour into the material which, in my humble opinion, failed to be funny.