Biology: A Self-Teaching Guide (Wiley Self Teaching Guides)

If you're like me and needed to learn all of highschool biology in the space of a few months, and hate wasting time on content fluff, then this is the book for you. No filler explanations, no time wasted; just pure biology in ultra condensed format that gets straight to the point with concise expelnations and definitions. This isn't a textbook, it's a self teaching backbone to substitute additional research and practice (which you'll want to do to properly retain the info, as sometimes a bit more explanation is needed than what's provided. Occasionally this book gets a little TOO condensed). Covers everything you could possibly need to know about highschool biology basics, food chains, environment, cell types, etc. This thing thing is probably more detailed than what's taught in American highschools tbh.

Great book for learning and retaining info.

This is a well-written review of general biology (particularly cell biology). I recommend it to students who are coming into a biochemistry class, to brush up on their cell biology. However, this book is not truly "self-teaching" for anyone who has zero biology background, for two main reasons. (1) It is written mainly as a review of biology rather than a text. It will be difficult to learn biology from it. Just managing the terms it refers to is impossible if you don't already know something about them. (2) You cannot take everything in this book literally, so you have to watch out for conceptual and typographical mistakes. For someone who has no biology previously, one won't be able to tell what not to trust. For example, in Ch. 2 under Lysosome, it states that "A lysosome is a membrane-enclosed storage vesicle." While this is true, the name lysosome means that the key function of this organelle is to break down larger molecules (mainly proteins) to recycle them. There are also some typos. For example, in Ch. 3 under Eukaryotic Cell Division, it says "The chromosomes are the structures in the cells that contain the greens." When you use this book, it is best not to get fixated on the details. Focus on the big picture that is presented by the book to use it as a quick review of biology. I will not recommend trying to learn biology from it.

My middle schooler liked this book…since he is preparing for his science bowl..this book helps him to understand properly lots of important biological aspects.

While I found this resource to have some value, I honestly am surprised that Wiley Publisher would allow this to go out under their publishing name. It is riddled with mistakes. Answer keys that are missing answers, questions that are missing the multiple choice options, information that is inaccurate (facilitated diffusion is a passive transport not active as is listed in the vocabulary... 1 of multiple errors). In Ch. 17 every answer for the answer key is wrong. It's disappointing, but I do appreciate having an inexpensive book that I can practice with. Just please double check things, if something seems off.

I developed an interest in biology when the COVID-19 spread widely, but biology textbooks are just expensive. So I bought this book as an alternative. I am glad I bought this book. It presents a detailed and overall introduction to fundamental biology knowledge in plain language, which is very helpful for beginners like me.

If you are someone that wants to expand your knowledge about biology without taking or reading overwhelming books. This is the one for you. Very short chapters with quizzes at the end of each with one to help grasp an understanding.

Great book to use as a CLEP Test prep supplement. The book is well-written, with information as recent as COVID-19 facts. The test questions at the end of each chapter are good reviews of the material addressed, and the diagrams are clear. The book also has an impressive glossary.