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Rating: 
Summary: Look elsewhere
Review: Too many misleading statements in this book for me. I'd recommend that you avoid this book, and instead go to your nearest college bookstore and purchase a biology text intended for the freshman biology overview course.Here's a snippet from page 18:
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"By about 4.6 billion years ago, the cloud had flattened out into a hot, dense, slowly rotating disc. Within this giant disc of raw material, concentrations of elements and energy developed. Our own sun was one of these "concentrations," and it was right in the middle. For the next 10 billion years, thermonuclear reactions within the concentration of materials kept the sun's development going until it finally became the sun as we see it today."
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Do the math. 4.6 billion years ago + 10 billion years = 5.4 billion years in the future. From pages 22 and 23:
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"The earth's oceans and it's [sic] oldest rocks formed about 3.9 billion years ago.
...
For 3.9 billion years, there was no life; then for 3.5 billion years, there was life."
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Do the math again. DuTemple is implying the earth 7.4 billion years old. This doesn't match other sources (see ask.com, and ignore the creationism entries), which suggest the solar system is about 4.5-4.6 billion years old. Here's a misleading snippet from page 180:
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"Water contains oxygen; it's not called H2O for nothing. That "O" stands for oxygen. If we humans tried to obtain our oxygen from water, we'd die, but other animals are able to live by getting their entire oxygen supply from water."
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It's misleading, in that it's implying that animals are cracking water to get oxygen, instead of obtaining oxygen that is dissolved in the water. There are too many misleading statements on too many pages for my taste, and I would not recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Look elsewhere
Review: Too many misleading statements in this book for me. I'd recommend that you avoid this book, and instead go to your nearest college bookstore and purchase a biology text intended for the freshman biology overview course. Here's a snippet from page 18:
==
"By about 4.6 billion years ago, the cloud had flattened out into a hot, dense, slowly rotating disc. Within this giant disc of raw material, concentrations of elements and energy developed. Our own sun was one of these "concentrations," and it was right in the middle. For the next 10 billion years, thermonuclear reactions within the concentration of materials kept the sun's development going until it finally became the sun as we see it today."
==
Do the math. 4.6 billion years ago + 10 billion years = 5.4 billion years in the future. From pages 22 and 23:
==
"The earth's oceans and it's [sic] oldest rocks formed about 3.9 billion years ago.
...
For 3.9 billion years, there was no life; then for 3.5 billion years, there was life."
==
Do the math again. DuTemple is implying the earth 7.4 billion years old. This doesn't match other sources (see ask.com, and ignore the creationism entries), which suggest the solar system is about 4.5-4.6 billion years old. Here's a misleading snippet from page 180:
==
"Water contains oxygen; it's not called H2O for nothing. That "O" stands for oxygen. If we humans tried to obtain our oxygen from water, we'd die, but other animals are able to live by getting their entire oxygen supply from water."
==
It's misleading, in that it's implying that animals are cracking water to get oxygen, instead of obtaining oxygen that is dissolved in the water. There are too many misleading statements on too many pages for my taste, and I would not recommend this book.
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