Campbell and Reece are best known as the authors of the hefty and excellent "Biology", now in it's 6th edition used by undegraduate biology majors and AP Biology students."Essential Biology" uses a different approach. The authors have packed a great deal into this amazingly small textbook. I recently reviewed a huge number of introductory biology texts for adoption in our school district. We use Campbell and Reece's Biology, 6th edition for our AP biology course but were looking for a textbook to use with our 9th grade honors biology students.
After a lengthy comparison of textbooks we picked "Essential Biology" based on several things. First we found the book to be accurate, readable, and concise. We felt that it would give the students a depth of understanding in the core biological principles so that they would be ready when they moved on to AP biology later in their high school career.
Instead of trying to "cover" everything under the biological sun, "Essential Biology" focuses on four core biological topics: cells, genetics, evolution, and ecology. It's 20 chapters are broken up into these 4 units and does a wonderful job of pulling it all together.
Other textbooks certainly cover more material but with less depth. What is the use of having a huge textbook that the students either never finish or rush through with no real understanding? This is a textbook that the students can dig into and throughly understand during one course.
It is supported by CD-ROM's and on-line material. The website provides activities, on-line labs, quizes, and other practice. Students can print out results or e-mail them to their teachers.
I would recommend this text as one for use in a non-majors biology course or as an advanced high school biology introductory course.
Textbook
College Text Book
Fine overall, however tileted towords "group selection" thinking.