Biology Book Reviews

Author: David Attenbrough
Reviewer: David White (Y12)

Star rating:

I was lent a copy of this book and told it was very interesting, so I started it with an open mind intending to enjoy the book. However I realised after about 10 pages that this book was a little out of my league and was struggling to understand everything.

The book is from David Attenbrough's television series, and is designed to give the history of life. In the words of Attenbrough, it is "a re-enactment of 3500 million years of history with a cast of characters drawn from the whole range of life on Earth today".

Having read the book I felt it was too advanced for me, but I would like to read it again in a few year's time, when I may understand it more.

Title: The Life of Mammals

Author: David Attenborough
Reviewer: Shina Kenogbon (Y12)

Star rating:

This book explores the wonderful world of mammals on Earth, from the well-known rat to the not so well-known viscachas (gerbil-like rodents from Argentina). From the first page Attenbrough takes us on a vivid journey around each continent and explains the behaviour of the native mammals. The book also contains many pictures of these mammals in their natural environments, enabling the reader to see the mammals they are reading about.
Skilfully, Attenbrough condenses such a broad topic into simple, easy-to-read English, so that people who aren't scientifically minded are able to understand. I was able to understand all that Attenbrough wrote about and would recommend this book to anyone of twelve years and above. Although the book is well researched and informative, Attenbrough's style soon becomes monotonous as you read through the chapters. The book is therefore better for simply gaining information than for reading at one's leisure.

Title: The Blue Planet: A Natural History of the Oceans

Author: Byatt, Fothergill, Holmes, and Attenborough
Reviewer: Rochelle Eager (Y12)

Star rating:

This is the book that accompanies the Blue Planet TV series. The photographs are fantastic and these alone make the book well worth having a look at. The text that accompanies these pictures is both interesting and a great source of learning.

The best parts of this book for me were the photographs and the first chapter. This chapter goes into great detail about the beginning of the Earth, and tells you things that you aren't taught in school. It also explains how the oceans work, and the need for the hydrological cycle in order for there to be life on Earth.

The downfall of this book is the complicated language it uses in some of the chapters. This is a disappointment as it made these chapters hard or even impossible to understand. As this is a book to accompany a popular television series, this isn't ideal, and will put some people off reading this book.

I would recommend this book to other people but with the warning that you may need a biological dictionary to understand all the terms.

Title: A Devil's Chaplain: Selected Writings

Author: Richard Dawkins
Reviewer:

Star rating:

This is a book of selected essays by the evolutionary-biologist writer on a variety of subjects in which he is eager to defend scientific truth. At first I thought I would never be able to understand much of the content, but as I got into it, I realised how relevant biology is to every aspect of life and the world we live in.

There is no doubt that Dawkins is a brilliant writer, although there were some essays that didn't appeal to me. Sometimes it was hard to keep reading, in case there was something interesting on the next page or in the next essay, so it's not a book I would recommend to anyone who isn't prepared to read it patiently from start to end.

I liked the essays "Science, Genetics and Ethics"; "Trial by Jury"; "The Joy of Living Dangerously"; "Son of Moore's Law" and "Chinese Junk and Chinese Whispers" in particular. I also enjoyed the section "There is all Africa and her prodigies in us." What I didn't like was the large section on book reviews and laments, as I didn't find these relevant, although I can understand why the editor would have wanted to include them, as they are personal to Dawkins.

All in all the book gave me a lot to think about - from religion to all the wonderful scientific discoveries and inventions to come in the next few hundred years (which I will miss).

Title: Climbing Mount Improbable

Author: Richard Dawkins
Reviewer: Maddie Toyne (Y12)

Star rating:

In this book Dawkins sets out to explain evolution. Living things have evolved and changed in response to changes in their environment, and he explains that this is neither accidental, nor is it designed with pen and paper. Dawkins explains this all in modern English with very little complex language, although in places it does take a certain amount of knowledge to follow his points.

Each chapter describes a different example of evolution. In "getting off the ground", Dawkins' sense of humour sets in as he discusses the possibility of a hippopotamus evolving flight, and he concludes "if you want to develop flying don't start with a hippo". Mount Improbable becomes plainly obvious in this chapter as each flying species is different from the others, and they have all developed different routes up the peaks of this metaphorical mountain. One of Dawkins' simpler chapters, but one of the most informative and interesting.

"The four-fold path to enlightenment" concerns the evolution of the eye from a patch of cells that recognise light and dark to the highly complex structures of today, cup-shaped with layers of pigment. Of the forty charted steps of the evolution of the eye, Dawkins takes a handful of the most significant, such as shaping, pigment and imaging quality, and demonstrates how each change was a step in the right direction.

"Pollen grains and magic bullets" is all about the link between plants and animals, sparked by a comment his young daughter made that "flowers are there to make the world pretty and for bees to make honey for us". From this Dawkins explains the relationship from the point of view of the animals, wondering what the plants would say if they could speak.

Altogether a very well written and highly useful book, not just to be used in advanced science, but in understanding the world around us, which is even more complex than the science itself. A great book and a good read.

Title: Climbing Mount Improbable

Author: Richard Dawkins
Reviewer: Craig Dixon (Y13)

Star rating:

This is a funny, fascinating and exiting book that is very easy to read.

I found it very interesting as it condensed the very large topic of evolution and made it simpler and clearer to understand. Evolution is a very confusing subject, but Dawkins manages to break it down into manageable chunks of information that are easy to digest. The book covers a variety of topics including variation, mutations, natural selection and classification.

There may be a lot to read, but Dawkins' enthusiastic, entertaining and persuasive writing style informs you and entertains you at the same time. You can learn and laugh with this book, and the visual aids and diagram also help to get your head around evolution. Dawkins is a gifted storyteller who has a written a riveting and enthralling science book that makes evolutionary biology comprehensible and acceptable. He is the modern day equivalent of Galileo and Darwin.

I highly praise this book as it is informative, educational and amusing, and it is a wonderful introduction to A2 biology.

Title: The Blind Watchmaker

Author: Richard Dawkins
Reviewer: Mellisa Yorke (Y12)

Star rating:

When I first got this book I have to be honest and say I had no idea what the watchmaker argument was. I found the book really interesting although hard going at times. I don't think I fully understand all the concepts, but it was still an enjoyable read.

Dawkins begins the book with the watchmaker argument. This is thought to be a convincing "proof" for the existence of God: living things are so complex they must have been made by God, just as a watch must have been made by a watchmaker. But according to Dawkins "All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way...it is the blind watchmaker".

The following chapters of Dawkins book are mainly about Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Dawkins then wraps up his book with some false theories about how we come to exist. These include theories such as the "intelligent designer" theory.

One thing Richard Dawkins baffled me with was his argument that "one should not assume what they are trying to explain". I can imagine that if I read this book again I would gain much more from it because I only just began to get to grips with some of the more in-depth concepts and with a couple of things I only just scratched the surface.

Title: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

Author: Matt Ridley
Reviewer: Nicola Ibbertson (Y12)

Star rating:

In Genome, Matt Ridley takes an unusual approach in describing newly-discovered genes and their effects: he assigns each human chromosome a chapter (there are therefore 23 chapters) and then selects a gene on this chromosome to discuss.

The book, written in 1999, was highly relevant at the time of its publication as it coincided with the first draft of the Human Genome Project, and it provides a simple explanation of everything you might need in order to understand the human genome, which is now completed.

The parts I enjoyed most were those parts that linked us to our ancestors, as they provided me with some quite astonishing facts about our close relationship with other species. It also provides in-depth information about a variety of genetic diseases, along with their causes and symptoms, which I think will prove useful during A-level and further studies. I also think that the explanations of genes, bases and proteins will be of help to A-level biologists as it will provide them with a head start in the syllabus.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this book although some areas required repeat reading in order to fully comprehend them, and a dictionary was needed to check some of the scientific terms.

Title: The Thread of Life: The Story of Genes and Genetic Engineering

Author: Susan Aldridge
Reviewer: Matthew Charlesworth (Y12)

Star rating:

This book is informative and tells us how DNA and genes were discovered. It is written in a form I can understand and uses terms that are familiar to me. After introducing you to DNA Ms. Aldridge tells us about genetic engineering and its applications to humans - such as gene therapy, genetic screening and DNA fingerprinting.

The author then goes on to tell us about biotechnology and how genetic engineering can be applied to problems such as making vegetarian cheese or cleaning up the environment. The final part of the book explains how a knowledge of how genes are structured and how they function can tell us about evolution.

I learned a lot from this book. The highlight in my opinion was learning how Hertwig and Meischer made the discovery of the nucleus and its contents.

Title: The Human Blueprint

Author: Robert Shapiro
Reviewer: Lucy Holt (Y12)

Star rating:

This book provides an in-depth insight into what the future might bring once the DNA code has been "unlocked". It is written in four sections: past; present; tomorrow; and the day after tomorrow. This effectively provides a timeline of scientific discoveries from Mendel to Morgan to Watson and Crick and Sanger's method of reading DNA. It then goes on to describe the human genome project, the attempt to read the human DNA and unlock the secrets of diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The writer also broaches the many social and ethical dilemmas we may face in the future, like "designer babies".
Although the subjects written about are very interesting, some parts of the book were extremely complicated and required more biology knowledge to understand and needs full concentration and attention! I enjoyed the different moral situations and arguments presented as well as the information on the major scientific discoveries. I disliked the complicated sections on base pairs (often pages of A, C, G, T).

Title: In Search of the Double Helix: Quantum Physics and Life

Author: John Gribbin
Reviewer: Junaid Bhatti (Y12)

Star rating:

This book is about all the different people who contributed to the discovery of DNA. The first chapter starts with Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. And the chapters proceed describing how people built on others' discoveries and theories, leading to the discovery of the structure of DNA.
Overall I thought this book was good at describing the roles of all the different people in the story of DNA, bit it became too advanced for me at stages, when it went into quantum physics using words that I have never heard of. The book gave me a deeper understanding of DNA and chromosomes and the history of its discovery, but I think that it could have been set out more clearly, and it got boring at times.

I give it a 2-star rating because I did find parts of DNA were explained in too much detail and it was too advanced for me.

Title: The Double Helix

Author: James D. Watson
Reviewer: Dr Millar

Star rating:

This is James Watson's personal account of how he and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA in 1953. It covers the three years that Watson spent at Cambridge University and gives a vivid insight into the way this research was done - which seems to be by lucky guesses and flashes of inspiration rather than by any hard work. Not the best role model for today's students perhaps, but Watson's passion and enthusiasm is certainly a good example to follow.

All the DNA biology that is familiar to A-level students is in here, such as nucleotides, base-pairing and of course the double helix itself, but it still manages to grab your attention. The book reads like a detective novel, as Watson and Crick struggle to beat the Americans to the prize of the "secret of life" and to the Nobel prize that would await the winner.

"The Double Helix" is important in another way. It was one of the first popular science books before there was such a thing as a popular science book. When Watson wrote it in 1963, the scientific community was aghast. Scientists were not supposed to reveal their personal lives like this. But the book was immediately a massive best-seller and it introduced the general public to scientific research and to DNA.

Although the story is now 50 years old, it's still great fun, and worth reading for the inside story of the biggest discovery of the 20th century.

Title: The Hot Zone

Author: Richard Preston
Reviewer: Becky Etherington (Y12)

Star rating:

This book gives a detailed account of the outbreak of Ebola virus in a small town just outside Washington DC. It follows the journeys of the first victims of each virus, listing their symptoms in gruesome detail and brutal honesty. Preston describes each aspect of the discovery and development of the Ebola Zaire virus and its cousins Marburg and Ebola Sudan viruses, and he frequently compares these filoviruses with the more well known but equally lethal AIDS virus HIV; the only difference being the time taken to destroy the victim: "Ebola does in 10 days what it takes HIV 10 years to accomplish".

This book was written to be understood by anyone, and while there are large paragraphs about the virus's ability to mutate with too many scientific phrases, it is generally easily understood. It is also good to read a non-fiction book knowing that Preston has personally interviewed every member of the story (except the dead ones obviously).

This book should not be read by anyone who is squeamish or against animal testing for medical purposes, as "the Hot Zone" describes the killing of monkeys and their use in the transportation and discovery of the filovirus in Africa and the USA.