Human Biology (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac)
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Consumer Rating: 
By: Cecie Starr and Beverly McMillan
Format: Paperback
From: Thomson Learning
Pub. Date: August 2005
Product Details:
Catalog: Book
Release Date: 2005-09-28
Media: Paperback
Number Of Pages: 600
Ean: 9780534997830
Isbn: 053499783X
ABOUT THE BOOK
In this 6th edition of HUMAN BIOLOGY, Cecie Starr and Bev McMillan have created a friendly, issues-oriented book with enormous instructional power. The Sixth Edition of Starr and McMillan's best-selling HUMAN BIOLOGY is designed to help students understand human biology by engaging them in learning in every way possible. Segments on the FREE accompanying interactive CD-ROM, as well as the CNN® Today videos, Web links, and reading from the InfoTrac® College Edition library are all integrated with the text to support, illuminate, and reinforce the text. The chapter opening "Impacts, Issues" case study focuses students on a key biology-related societal issue and is revisited throughout the chapter. Then the chapter's "How Would You Vote?" feature asks students to consider a related news topics, gather and evaluate pro/con information, apply knowledge, and cast a vote on the Web. Students can see how peers in their state and across the nation voted. The free Student CD-ROM provides access to BiologyNow, a powerful diagnostic learning tool that helps students assess their unique study needs through pretests and personalized learning plans. The content has been updated as well. Several key chapters have been reorganized to improve the flow of ideas and to better tie core concepts to illustrations. For example, the chapter on digestion and nutrition has expanded coverage of dietary guidelines and weight control. Chapter 9 provides a more focused, better-illustrated discussion of heart structure, the cardiac cycle, and circuits of blood flow. Coverage of human evolution is expanded in Chapter 24. Other updated content can be found in the chapters on the muscular system, digestive system, and cardiovascular system. There is also expanded coverage of topics such as food allergies, newly emerging infectious diseases including SARS, "Mad Cow" disease, and West Nile virus. Sections on disorders of the nervous system and immune system have been expanded too.
"At first glance, I was excited to dive into this book, but it looks like the publisher and authors have continued the sins of the previous editions. This text is exceedingly disorganized, fuzzy, incoherent, and even contains some errors. I get the impression that the authors attempted to streamline the material and did so very, very poorly. A much better purchase would be the 3x as thick (concise and enjoyable) Biology by Campbell and Reece.
I am giving this a 1 rather than a 2 as I think it is unforgiveable for a textbook to hinder learning.
A reviewer of the previous edition said he/she pitied those students assigned the text and suggested that faculty consider something else - anything else. I agree wholeheartedly. I mentioned it to my professor and will mention it again during the review of my class. Waste, waste, waste.
Another text, Cell Biology and Genetics, by the publisher and one of the coauthors (Starr) is even worse than this one. The two connections are Thomson/Brooks/Cole the publisher and Cecie Starr, the author."
~ Written on 2006-07-09