Reviews for Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology 1999

The average rating for Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology 1999 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-10-10 00:00:00 Jacques Van Der Velde Overall, this was an okay text. I read it not for a course but to update my personal knowledge of the subject originally gained in the 1970s and only supplemented in a piecemeal fashion. A problem: The authors/ editors do not seem to have a consistent view of their audience, which seems a problem for a textbook. Some parts of the book are moderately challenging, requiring one to bring to active use material learned in earlier chapters; this is particularly so in the coverage of biochemistry and cytology. Another inconsistency, not unrelated to the first, is in the rigor of the science. For example, the chapters on ecology seemed more loosely reasoned then the book's earlier chapters. My retained knowledge gained from Scientific American articles and from economics showed up gaps in these chapters. Finally the tone was inconsistent, ranging from dispassionately descriptive to preachy. Minor point: the glossary needs expansion. It misses terms, not common outside the field, that are used in widely separated parts of the text.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-07-31 00:00:00 Michelle Dudley This text is very poorly written. It is unnecessarily obfuscating and jargon cluttered. If there are three terms with which to describe the exact same thing, Raven is sure to give you four. There are much better General Biology texts out there which I had to refer to because Raven makes such a muddle of things. Better and more highly recommended texts are Sadava "Life" (Very Good) and Freeman "Biological Science" (Fantastic). Campbell is good too. Aside from the plethora of unnecessary jargon, the book's other primary failing is a lack of unification in what is presented. Nothing is tied to anything else. This book is essentially a loose assemblage of facts about biology without any seeming connection. I will mention that the final chapters on ecology are, however somewhat better written than the rest of the book. In these chapters (and only in these chapters) the facts are presented not as they are elsewhere, as just a string of true statements (or purportedly true statements - another failing of Raven is that he uses many speculative studies which are still being debated and after mentioning they are still disputed, proceeds to treat them as though they were established facts) connected by conjunctions and unnecessarily technical mumbo jumbo, but as a unity of interrelated, interlocking parts to a puzzle. I cannot imagine (and I can imagine quite a good deal) any possible way this text could have been written more poorly.