ISBN087893250X

This book is a decent developmental textbook, but it focuses too little on explanation and too much on storytelling. While this style is appropriate in group talks, it wastes time when someone is trying to learn quickly and makes it difficult to find the useful pieces of information. The only way I have been able to use this book is with a highlighter at all times.

The text could also benefit from a reorganization. It seems that in order to get a good picture of the pathways that are recurring themes in development, one has to read the book out of order, and that can be confusing.

Other than that, it is factually accurate for the most part and has a sturdy binding, so it will last. The paper it's printed on isn't too great and ink/highlighter can show through, but not too badly.

Overall this is a good introduction to developmental biology, but it is not very useful as a quick reference or for someone trying to learn a specific organism quickly.

With a clear prose and a CD with links to all source material, this book is a great source for any biologist interested in the development of organisms, and how it was all figured out.

I had this mail to review a book that I would love to read. However I still did not receive it. And nobody is able to explain what happened to my book that bought the book in August. It will be my last purchaise at amazon.

The book came in excellent conditions and it was in home in the date amazon specified. I saved a few dollars buying it here so next semester I will consider buying all the books here. Thanks a lot!!

I used this book as a textbook for a senior-level class in Developmental Biology. Gilbert is the standard reference, and I had used his 2nd edition book years ago when I had Embryology myself. Someone else ordered the book (before I was hired) but I was relieved when I found out that it was Gilbert's text.

However, much has changed since the second edition. One bewildering aspect is that, although development arguably begins at the point of gamete fusion (fertilization), this is not covered until Chapter 7... there is half a semester's worth of material before one even gets to fertilization. This strikes me as too long; many of the concepts that precede it are really best handled afterwards (such as cell-cell signaling). I note that fertilization made its appearance in Chapter 2 of the 2nd edition, so it is not just my personal view that this is the right place to begin -- it used to be Gilbert's!

Beyond the strange choice of sequence, I found that this book focuses too much on idiosyncratic details and not enough on over-arching concepts. For instance, Gilbert spends pages upon pages describing in detail one specific cascade reaction after another, without ever really "zooming out" to generally address the importance of cascade reactions overall. In other words, he spends so much time focusing on the detailed nuances of the leaves on every tree, that he misses the forest.

My students universally despised this book, and complained that it was near impossible to follow or understand. They said that they got much more out of my lectures. But the only difference was that I spent time poring over the book (as I am not really a Developmental Biologist myself) and reading it carefully, and then making outlines of the general concepts that Gilbert was illustrating with his details. I could then present the concepts to the students, and tell them that the book has examples.

I really believe that a text book should be organized around concepts and biological processes, not the details of a thousand examples. Examples will be forgotten over time, and can be looked up in any case, but the understanding of the overall concept is what one most needs to obtain in class, and from a text book. This edition of the book is really just a compendium of examples from the literature, and not a textbook of concepts.

I know that Gilbert is a "standard" text in this field, but I am nevertheless exploring other Developmental Biology texts for next year, because this one just does not do the job that a good basic text book should do.