Biology: Visualizing Life

Rating:
Summary: Totally Incomprehensible
Review: I studied from "Biology: Visualizing Life" in my Biology class last year and I absolutely hated it. First of all, my teacher couldn't teach Biology and relied on the book to tell us what we needed to know. Therefore, my performance on the tests was directly reliant on how well I understood the way that the book presented the material. I took the book home and tried to read the assigned chapters. I read them and reread them until I got a headache. I simply didn't understand. The book is very bad at introducing new terminology and explaining foreign concepts. It never gives background information or slowly eases its way into new lessons -- the material is presented in a very matter-of-fact, dry, to-the-point manner. This may be appropriate for research writing, but it is certainly not appropriate for teaching Biology students. If you are interested in actually learning biology, I would not recommend this textbook because I didn't learn anything from it. This book is supposed to be aimed at students, but if students can't understand it, then it's a colossal failure. Schools and students alike would be wise to avoid this textbook at all costs.