Customer Rating: 
Summary: Textbook
Comment: textbook was very worn, not in good condition for what it was described and what i paid for. this is the first time this has happened when ordering through amazon.
Customer Rating:
Summary: College Text Book
Comment: The price beats what most college bookstores charge. I always reccommend purchasing online it could cut the cost of the book in half. However if your going to purchase your college book online you should visit the college bookstore and find out what the instructor requires for the class a few weeks ahead of time so you dont get stuck paying for expedited shipping.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fine overall, however tileted towords "group selection" thinking.
Comment: Overall the book is written well . I especially like the "evolutionary connection" segment at the end of each chapter. My only gripe is is that while it repeatedly stresses in the text and test data bank that the "population is the smallest unit of evolution", it fails to explicitly mention that the "gene is the smallest unit of selection". It make the authors suspect to be adherence of the old "group selection" thinking.
Also would it be nice had it address basic sociobiological concepts which are cornerstone of evolutionary thinking.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bio Book
Comment: I needed this book for college. At the college book store the same exact book was $120.00 plus tax. On Amazon it was $80.00!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Depth and Accuracy
Comment: Campbell and Reece are best known as the authors of the hefty and excellent "Biology", now in it's 6th edition used by undegraduate biology majors and AP Biology students."Essential Biology" uses a different approach. The authors have packed a great deal into this amazingly small textbook. I recently reviewed a huge number of introductory biology texts for adoption in our school district. We use Campbell and Reece's Biology, 6th edition for our AP biology course but were looking for a textbook to use with our 9th grade honors biology students.
After a lengthy comparison of textbooks we picked "Essential Biology" based on several things. First we found the book to be accurate, readable, and concise. We felt that it would give the students a depth of understanding in the core biological principles so that they would be ready when they moved on to AP biology later in their high school career.
Instead of trying to "cover" everything under the biological sun, "Essential Biology" focuses on four core biological topics: cells, genetics, evolution, and ecology. It's 20 chapters are broken up into these 4 units and does a wonderful job of pulling it all together.
Other textbooks certainly cover more material but with less depth. What is the use of having a huge textbook that the students either never finish or rush through with no real understanding? This is a textbook that the students can dig into and throughly understand during one course.
It is supported by CD-ROM's and on-line material. The website provides activities, on-line labs, quizes, and other practice. Students can print out results or e-mail them to their teachers.
I would recommend this text as one for use in a non-majors biology course or as an advanced high school biology introductory course.
