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List Price: £17.50
Our Price: £8.50
Author:
Donna Rae Siegfried
By John Wiley & Sons
 Excellent apart from the language used., 2010-01-04
This book is a good as previous reviews suggest. I will be using it for this year and certainly into first year of uni. It is fun to use and easy to follow. The only negative point I have seen is that the language used is American English so words such as oesophagus are spelt esophagus but spell checker should solve that for written work.
List Price: £44.99
Our Price: £32.11
Author:
Gerard J. Tortora, Bryan H. Derrickson
By John Wiley & Sons
A must buy for any human anatomy student or practitioner, 2010-02-09
Great book. I used the earlier edition a great deal throughout my BSc Human Biology and Sports Science degree and have now bought the handy 2 volume addition for use during my MSc in Physiotherapy. Much cheaper than the hard back and in my mind it is a sensible option for those that do not wish to lug around the whole book when you can now just carry the half you need for the day. Highly recommended!!
List Price: £22.99
Our Price: £15.67
Author:
Glenn Toole, Susan Toole
By Nelson Thornes Ltd
Excellent revision book, 2009-12-28
This book is an excellent revision guide, definately recommend it for AS Level (1st year A Level).
List Price: £3.99
Our Price: £0.59
Author:
Charles Darwin
By Wordsworth Editions Ltd
It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable. To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem--it's full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it's all in here. Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T. H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence--on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal--that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. --Mary Ellen Curtin, Amazon.com
A book that changed the world.., 2010-03-05
This book is truly fantastic. I've studied and been researching into Darwin and the Theory of evolution for a long time now, and having read this book once before, I decided it was a must have on my bookshelf. I've just finished reading it, and Darwin's intelligence shines through by his literary genius, that whilst sometimes hard to follow due to the time period he's writing it in, is very concise and clear and shows a complete understanding of his theory and total confidence in his research and findings.
A must have for any person interested in this field, but is not so much for the average layperson.
List Price: £20.00
Our Price: £9.19
Author:
Richard Dawkins
By Bantam Press
There is grandeur here, too., 2010-02-21
Professor Richard Dawkins. Anyone would think that this is his second book, following the somewhat polarising God Delusion. Of course it's not, and for those that know his works on the biological realm, here he's back to near his best.
Unlike in other books, in "The Greatest Show On Earth" Dawkins hopes to outline the overwhelming evidence for evolution; to such an extent that even a "history-denier" must come round to the truth. In this objective, I fear the prof may be dissapointed, for as he himself recognises, the creationist is no friend of evidence against their particular doctrine and dogma.
I must quickly point out to the theist open to scientific evidence that, "The God Delusion" notwithstanding, here Dawkins is anything but insulting to religion. If anything he is openly concillatory to those who accept the theory, but cite the guiding hand of God behind it. Here he is only interested in the incontravertible facts, no philosophy is to be found.
Dawins is brilliant on biology; brilliant on science. His wonderfully literary prose is unmatched in my opinion within the realm of the popularisation of science. Anyone with a vague interest in the theory of evolution will find grandeur within these pages, as they will with the view that the understanding of the theory provides.
He makes it so interesting, and so easy to understand. His digressions are thoughtful and warranted, his footnotes often as humourous as they are informative. Dawkins is enjoying himself here, and it's reflected in a book far more enjoyable than The God Delusion. The evidence supporting the theory of evolution is vast and deep, and Dawkins has obviously had to limit himself. In doing this he has often had to find just a single example from any one of great libraries of evidence - DNA say, or comparative biology, or symbiosis, or the fossil record, or "unintelligent design". In each he finds something that, while often not being new to this reader, always contains a wow factor.
The only problem the book suffers is the limiting effect of the book's epic scope. Dawkins often has to curtail a chapter or digression, content to refer to earlier expositions found in other books. So here you find nothing to rival the magnificent final chapter of "Climbing Mount Improbable" on the co-evolution of figs and wasps (something that everyone should read and re-read until their jaw is sent dropping); or a deep and satisfying argument for a gene-selected rather than individual-selected view of natural selection as found in "The Selfish Gene".
I would say that this isn't quite his best, but having read most of his other works, I still couldn't put this one down.
Whether it is successful in converting the history deniers to the facts of evolution is for me unlikely, but that is irrlevent, "The Greatest Show On Earth" is the only game in town.
List Price: £9.99
Our Price: £3.81
Author:
Leonard Mlodinow
By Penguin
history of statistics, 2009-12-05
the title is incorrect but is explained in the text comes from math not statistics. brilliant explanation of stats and how they affect lives around the planet. some nice personal anecdotes. assumes some knowledge of stats but enough detail for the lay reader. worth buying!
List Price: £25.00
Our Price: £16.08
Author:
Iain McGilchrist
By Yale University Press
A physicist's view......., 2010-02-28
This book will undoubtedly be of great interest to psychologists, neuro-philosophers and generalists. However, as the author makes clear, it will be of limited value to physicists, mathematicians, logisticians and most scientists. The book at first reading seems to be an original interpretation of the argument between dualism and materialism, though the author makes it clear from the start that he is not a dualist. Here, rather than between good and evil, the argument is between the left and right brain. The author resorts mainly to a philosophical approach to an explanation of how the brain functions and takes the interpretation one stage further by inferring that the brain is further divided.
Science is more or less dismissed as reductionist. There is virtually no reference to the science beyond the early 20th century classical scientific theories, such as the modern quantum philosophies and the interpretations of space and time. These latter approaches extend well beyond the fundamental materialistic reductionisms. Modern science can be holistic and anthropic and physicists are the first to accept that their model (or metaphor?) may be incomplete. The author does however generously acknowledge that science may in the end be an alternative way of expressing the metaphor of the ultimate truth.
The book is divided into five parts really. The introduction is clear and sets the stage, the second and third larger parts are aptly described elsewhere. The penultimate part, master betrayed, could be read independently and is an excellent criticism and summary of the impact that computers, technology and speed of communication has had on modern society, though probably no less an impact than the Gutenberg's printing press which helped accelerate the Renaissance across Europe. The final part of the tome is a large notes section, characteristic of subject areas which do not have the luxury of a small number of explicit governing laws and principles, that make the life of a physicist happy and content.
In essence, a superb and thought-provoking book which gives me reassurance that I'm not the only one exhausted and dismayed by a bureaucratic, administrative, paper orientated, minutiae obsessed, ruled and regulated, anti-altruistic society.
List Price: £8.99
Our Price: £2.95
Author:
Jan Fennell, Monty Roberts
By HarperCollins Entertainment
Jan Fennell's unique understanding of the canine world and its language has enabled her to bring countless problem dogs - from biters and barkers to bicycle-chasers - to heel. In this, her first book, she shares her secrets and teaches how we can all learn to communicate with man's best friend.
Very clear, good advice, 2010-03-07
A very interesting book even if you are not trying to train your dog. Even though I do not have a horse I would now be very interested in seeing Monty Roberts work with horses.
I have a young, very strong dobermann and am currently putting into action the 4 processes that Jan describes. I'm not having success at quite the same speed with which she achieves it but am definitely seeing an improvement in my dogs behaviour- ie pulling like a train on the lead and always trying to dash out the door infront of me!
List Price: £8.99
Our Price: £3.30
Author:
Richard Dawkins
By OUP Oxford
A ground breaking popular Science book, 2010-02-14
This book hardly needs further introduction. It ranks in the central canon of popular Science writing, certainly in the same league as 'A Brief History of Time'. It is unsual in one respect in that it actually describes original thinking. Its central thesis is that the gene is the basic unit of natural selection, almost to the extent that bodies or cells are merely vehicles to perpetuate the continued existence of the genes themselves. A weakness here is that the book does not define a gene well. A single gene for example may encode for more than one protein; a protein may be the product of several individual genes. Dawkins goes onto explain how altruism may have evolved and that, rather than being paradoxical, is fully consistent with natural selection as outlined by Darwin. In this, Dawkins does provide arguments and evidence to support this. Overall, he is reasonably successful. We learn that group selection as such does not exist, but that through cooperation, it is possible for individuals to increase their own chances of survival and reproduction. We also learn that kin selection arises primarily through the sharing of the same genes: since my brother has a relatedness of 1/2, it may be worth sacrificing myself since my brother has half of my genes. There is, in my opinion, a very good description of the Prisoner's Dilemma, developed from game theory and how this can be applied to model the development of cooperation (or non-cooperation) strategies and to assess whether these may become so-called 'evolutionary stable strategies'. Clealy, this must be seen as an over-simplification. The complexities of molecular biology and neurobiology are great. The book ends with an introduction to Dawkins's next work, 'The Extended Phenotype'.
It is worth noting that the title of the book has led people to assume that Dawkins is a pure genetic determinist. Dawkins stresses that this is not the case, and that we may easily overcome the 'rule' of our genes. Indeed this is essential for living in a sustainable and peaceble manner. In the introduction to this anniversary edition, Dawkins even mentions some regret in the title of the work, since it causes many to make assumption about his beliefs and motives.
Overall, this is a ground-breaking and well written work that makes an excellent read.
List Price: £20.00
Our Price: £7.20
Author:
Jerry Fodor, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
By Profile Books
For those who take their atheism neat., 2010-02-19
The physicist James Jeans (1937) famously stated that the universe resembles "a great thought" more than it does a "great machine'. Modern-day adaptionists tightened the terms on which the natural world resembles a thought. They have done so by promoting the thought of a wealthy, Victorian, Englishman as the 'best idea anyone ever had.' The idea in question was not evolution (which has a far greater provenance than Darwin) but"natural selection". We have been told that Darwin's great thought was the simple and accurate reflection of a mechanical process which is the sole creator of the living world. Richard Dawkins goes further and suggests that all those branches of the "multiverse" which are blessed with biota are also products of natural selection (see Dawkin's 'The God Delusion').
Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini's scandalous book sets out to show that this emperor, although not naked, is wearing clothes cut from the same cloth as B.F. Skinner's Behaviorism. Some outraged Darwinists have reacted in hilarious fashion, to this astute, and apposite, comparison. They have burst into print to reassure the faithful that: both Natural Selection and Behaviorism are 'of great heuristic value'; and that Skinner's outmoded learning theory is 'in essence true'. This seems akin to a pair of one-legged dancers holding each other up on the ballroom floor. It is a delicious irony that the very adaptionists who took such delight in kicking the Standard Social Science Model to death now find that the boot fits more than one foot. The down-at-heel condition of Behaviorism became apparent once a new generation of cognitive psychologists developed fruitful hypotheses about the innate conditions for learning. Skinner had insisted that the "black box" was empty. Nevertheless, those who turned to cognitivism are still unpacking the box.
Like children who cling to nurse for fear of somemthing worse, many biologists are in denial about the ridiculous inadequacy of the algorithm of natural selection to subsume recent developments in epigenetics. However, the quasi-religious nature of their attachment will become more-and-more apparent to the brightest and the best. The multitudes who Moses lead up "Mount Improbable" may prove more unwilling to descend to the plains of disenchantment, where Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini have just crushed their master-signifier underfoot. The Dawkins/Dennett school of science fiction will continue to sell paperbacks
Darwin--that bearded Victorian god-- has proven to have feet of clay. So, this book is for those who take their atheism neat; it does have its flaws; note 16 (pp 109-111)was obviously intended to unpack a technical term that is quite crucial to a line of argument taken by the authors; unhappily, it peters out into a series of question marks: ??? (On reflection: quite serendipitious!)
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