Biology A Guide to the Natural World - The Custom Core

From the Author Book titles may be the first thing any reader sees in a book, but they're often the last thing an author ponders. Not so withBiology: A Guide to the Natural World.The title arrived fairly early on, courtesy of the muse, and then stuck because it so aptly expresses what I think is special about this book. Flip through these pages, and you'll see all the elements that student and teachers look for in any modern introductory textbook--rich, full-color art, an extensive study apparatus, and a full complement of digital learning tools. When you leaf slowly through the book and start to read a little of it, however, I think that something a little more subtle starts coming through. This second quality has to do with a sense of connection with students. The sensibility that I hope is apparent inA Guide to the Natural Worldis that there's a wonderful living world to be explored; that we who produced this book would like nothing better than to show this world to students; and that we want to take them on an instructive walk through this world, rather than a difficult march. All the members of the teams who produced the three editions ofA Guide to the Natural Worldworked with this idea in mind. We felt that we were taking students on a journey through the living world and that, rather like tour guides, we needed to be mindful of where students were at any given point. Would they remember this term from earlier in the chapter? Had we created enough of a bridge between one subject and the next? The idea was never to leave students with the feeling that they were wandering alone through terrain that lacked signposts. Rather, we aimed to give them the sense that they had a companion--this book--that would guide them through the subject of biology.A Guide to the Natural World,then, really is intended as a kind of guide, with its audience being students who are taking biology but not majoring in it. Biology is complex, however, and if students are to understand it at anything beyond the most superficial level, details are necessary. It won't do to make what one faculty member called "magical leaps" over the difficult parts of complex subjects. Our goal was to make the difficult comprehensible, not to make it disappear altogether. Thus, the reader will find in this book fairly detailed accounts of such subjects as cellular respiration, photosynthesis, immune-system function, and plant reproduction. It was in covering such topics that our concern for student comprehension was put to its greatest test. We like the way we handled these subjects and other key topics, however, and we hope readers will feel the same way. What's New in the Third Edition? The third edition of theGuidehas been substantially revised. Readers of this edition will find: Increased coverage of the diversity of the living world. Where once we had two chapters devoted to this subject, we now have three: one on animals, one on fungi and plants, and a third on microorganisms. This change has significantly increased our coverage of fungi and microorganisms. A new stand-alone chapter on the immune system. A general revision to the human anatomy and physiology unit that makes its coverage clearer and more relevant to the lives of students. All the major senses are now covered, whereas previously only vision was. A revamping of our biotechnology chapter, such that it now focuses on four sharply defined areas: transgenic biotechnology, reproductive cloning, forensic biotechnology, and personalized medicine. Substantially expanded coverage of human evolution. Information that has been updated, or that is new altogether, on such news-related subjects as oncogenes, dietary fats, human population growth, and global warming. As is apparent from this list, the relevance of biology to students was never far fromKrogh, David is the author of 'Biology A Guide to the Natural World - The Custom Core', published 2004 under ISBN 9780131471306 and ISBN 0131471309.