Brightsurf Science News and Current Science News Events
 

View Larger Image

The Cartoon Guide to Genetics (Updated Edition)


by Larry Gonick, Mark Wheelis

List Price: $17.95
Price: $12.21
You Save: $5.74 (32%)
Available: Usually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank: 10302
Studio: Collins
Binding: Paperback
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: August 14, 1991
Publisher: Collins


EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description
Illustrates, simplifies, and humor-coats the important principles of classical and modern genetics and their experimental bases, with amusing anecdotes about how the ancients tried to explain inheritance and sex determination.

Amazon.com
Having trouble deciphering your genetic code? Do dominant genes make you feel recessive? Let reigning nonfiction cartoonist Larry Gonick and microbiologist Mark Wheelis ease your way through Mendelian genetics, molecular biology, and the basics of genetic engineering. Gonick's drawings range from a moderately detailed look at ribosomes in action to loony pictures of dancing scientists, talking peas, and opinionated fruit flies. Matthew Meselson, co-discoverer of the "one gene-one protein" principle, says, "it puts textbooks to shame"--and he's right. --Mary Ellen Curtin


CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 38 reviews)

Great Introductory book for all ages  
The book is a simple guide to Genetics done in a fun and informative manner. It is an easy reading. For anyone trying to understand basic working of Genes and finding it difficult to understand from popular reading or other books, this is it.

April 18, 2008

basic genetics  
this book is an excellent resource for someone teaching and reviewing basic genetics. Although it misses out on recent udates and findings, it still paints the basics in comical, very simple and straight forward approaches. My friend is taking her preliminary exam in Genetics and when i lent her this book to help her recap old courses, she couldn't be more pleased by the easiness, and freshness this book brought to her studies. I am currently teaching fundamental genetics and i made it clear to my students that this is the last resort for those ith no hope of understanding genetics.. it works..!
April 05, 2008

Very good and fun way to learn about genetics  
The book provided an excellent and very useful introduction to genetics, without having to endure the dryness of most introductory textbooks, etc. Would definitely recommend it.
November 10, 2006

Nicely Engineered  
This is the update edition of "The Cartoon Guide to Genetics" by Larry Gonick and Mark Wheelis. The original edition was published in 1983, and this First Collins edition was published in 2005. This is one of a series of Cartoon Guides which Larry Gonick has co-authored with scientists in the field of choice. Mark Wheelis is the senior lecturer in Microbiology at the University of California at Davis.

The book opens with a pre-history of the field; discussing diverse subjects such as domestication of plants and animals, the biblical story of Jacob's Flock, spontaneous generation, selective breeding, and so on. They move on to give an excellent overview and history of the subject. Unlike the other Cartoon Guide's that I have read, this one lacks any chapters or sections. Perhaps they felt the subject was narrow enough that it was not necessary, but for readability it might have been better to have broken the book into chapters.

This book serves well as an introduction, overview, review, and/or history of the subject. Of the guides that I have read, I would rank this book just a slight bit behind the Cartoon Guide to Physics, and better than the Computer and Statsitics guides.

August 16, 2006

Splendid, Spectacular Overview  
I just finished this book an hour ago and am ready to rave about it (and, more generally, its highly visual and accessible approach). More than any "popular" science book I've ever read, it quickly took me to an unprecedented comfort level with the material. Cellular biology is a three-dimensional domain where pure-text approaches fall short when trying to describe the spatial processes of cellular replication, DNA copying, etc. I think that this writing team has a talent for making information teachable, and that this book (along with the books of its kind in the series) is a great gift to the curious layperson. Thanks again to the authors - wow!
March 22, 2006


SIMILAR PRODUCTS

The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry (Cartoon Guide To...)
by Larry Gonick, Craig Criddle

The Cartoon Guide to Physics
by Larry Gonick

Cartoon Guide to Statistics
by Larry Gonick, Woollcott Smith

Cartoon Guide to the Environment
by Larry Gonick, Alice Outwater

Cartoon History of the Universe 1 Vol. 1-7 (Cartoon History of the Universe) (Cartoon History of the Universe)
by Larry Gonick

© 2008 BrightSurf.com