Science Nature Books

This book is neither great nor poor. Actually there are not as many choices out there for Earth Science as there are for many other Science subjects. Therefore the school districts do not have a lot of choices. I've used the book with classes. As the one reviewer says, it is not always clear about what the main points are. Though an astute student should notice key terms are in bold face type. Yet often the definition, example of the term follows its first use by many pages. I even found it a bit confusing. Though the information is in the book. Many students do not know how to study, so if it does not jump out at them they just give up. I would not ditz the book like one reviewer has. The information that is presented is in the book, but the organization and presentation is not the best. Now I do agree that much of this book seems to be dated. I think that is because it is not really in a new addition. I've seen many copies of this book with dates from 1994 to 2001 and the cover and text seems to be exactly the same. So it looks like "2005 edition" is still the 1994 edition, just a new printing.

I am glad that one reviewer was able to learn using this book. Everyone is different, and so if this book turned on the light of understanding in one student, it can't be all-bad. And it is not all that bad, I just wish there actually was a much better Earth Science textbook out there. Our local district has been using this book for many years; most of our other science texts have been changed during those years.

I am afraid I will have to take exception to the naysayer's comments about this book using the Metric System. Where has he been during the last couple hundred years? The rest of the world uses the metric system. Today, only the USA does not. True, I don't know my height in centimeters, or the distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco in kilometers. But for many other matters we use the metric system all the time in everyday life. Do you know the focal length of your normal lens on a 35mm SLR camera in inches? Probably not, it's about 2 inches (50mm). Wow, and that great 210mm telephoto lens is how many inches? As far as science education goes, you will only use "English measure" in a few introductory classes in 9th grade and below. Chemistry and Physics are all metric. You will use both systems of measure in Biology, Geology, and Medical Sciences. Physical constants are easier numbers to remember in their metric forms. Also many ideas just are not thought of in English measure. Ever heard of pound-atomic-weights for the chemical elements. Actually that would not even make sense because a pound is a unit of force and not mass. This could not be used like gram atomic weights. Does anyone remember the English unit of mass? Do let me know if you actually do find a better Earth Sciences Textbook.

What a great book for a student taking the course of Earth Science! I, a former student, used this book when i was in 9th grade. When i took Earth Science, at first, i had a different book, and i was failing. When i asked my teacher for help, he told me to get this textbook, and use it. I had a 93 average entering the 10th grade in Science! This book gives great examples and helpful tips to a student. This book is not difficult to understand! Exellent and updated information. This book covers everything from the formation of Earth to Plate Tectonics, this book has it all!

This textbook is good as a second reference in an Earth Science Class. It does cover a lot of material. As a stand-alone source of information, the book does not do a good job of explaining topics or concepts. Many subjects are described in terms and vocabulary that are only partially explained. There is also some outdated subject information. For a text that has a copyright date of 2000, they talk about the focus problem of the Hubble Telescope and the current efforts to obtain computer enhanced images. I believe Shuttle astronauts fixed the telescope in 1994.
Also, all measurements are solely in the metric system. So an American student is constantly forced to convert metric units in their head to English units in order to comprehend subject scales. When was the last time someone asked you how tall you were? If you are from the USA, do you answer in feet and inches or meters and centimeters? Trying to absorb difficult concepts is tough enough. To add a foreign scale system (for USA students), compounds the difficulty in comprehension. Learning the metric system is one thing. To use the metric system exclusively in an Earth Science book (in the United States) to teach subject material is like using an unknown foreign language to try and explain something.

The book is written to keep the interest of every reader, but simple enough for the youngest child to understand. Experiments range from finding the bones in bird pellets, to extracting pigment from plants, to feeding sea anemones! There is an experiment just about every topic touched upon, using common tools and materials. Great book for hands on science.

I love this book. I am homeschooling my brilliant seven-year-old son using the classical curriculum recommended by Susan Bauer's book The Well-Trained Mind. When I started out the year, though, I still didn't have a science resource, so I went to the library. After renewing this book from my local library for months now, I am buying it. I don't know why I waited so long! This book is packed with full-color, two-page spreads on all the life science topics I will need this year and beyond. We have tried many of the experiments, and they are simple, inexpensive, and interesting.

This book has really helped me learn about science. It is simple and really explains complexted matters in a way anyone can understand. I recomend this book to anyone who feels that they want to understand sicence. Happy reading.

My son is a huge Alex Rider fan. Has read each book several times, and watched the movie as well. So this book was a must -- he now thinks he's got the inside scoop on AR. If you aren't a fan of the series, I imagine this book would be pretty lame.

It's great book, I' got it for my son he read it in one day. The service was great, we' ve got the books in no time.

At first I didn't think I would like this book. I got it as a present. but it was neat to see the different gadgets Alex gets to use in each story. It made me want to read the next book (point blank) right away! I really love this series. (as told by my 8 year old son)

My 4-year-old son and I really love the "original" Magic School Bus books by Cole & Degan. They are all great books which introduce science concepts in a way kids can grasp. The Scholastic knock-offs from the TV show seem to be very variable in quality - some are good and some fail. As a series they all lack the depth of information which is the hallmark of the Cole & Degan books.

This is one of the worst from the Scholastic series. I realize that they are just making books directly from the TV series scripts, but the writing in this one is poor. It doesn't flow well and had a "fingernails on a blackboard" quality for me.

I got it for my 6 year old granddaughter and she loved it so much i have to read it to her almost everyday

My children love MSB. I used to read this book to my older one, and now my 4YO has started to enjoy it. This one is a favorite because children enjoy outer space stuff and in this book, the Magic School Bus zooms around the galaxy and the MSB kids ask the questions and do things that real kids would like to ask and do. Great for learning and imagination!

My three-year old son is a Magic School Bus and astronomy fanatic. It's a great book to introduce kids to the life cycles of stars and how stars are formed!

Utterly fascinating and, when it comes to understanding what makes human beings tick, is of greater reality, to my mind, than the phantasmagorical reaches of psychoanalysis, and more fundamental. Painstakingly researched. A scholarly book written in an accessible and engaging style.

So many great little factoids. My favorite topics include family planning (abortion, infanticide), maternal bonding, the adaptiveness of menopause, females in social structure, and lots of other tidbits I wish more authors would cover. The most fascinating thing is that these topics come up in the animal kingdom, not just with us.

Only complaint might be that it's a dense read, and doesn't have a nice "backdrop" to organize it like Robert Wright's books (which I highly recommend). For this reason, you might need to read it twice to get everything. The facts themselves are tremendous, however. This book illustrates many more complexities about females that her male contemporaries might gloss over. Hrdy offers balance to anyone who's read other books on the same topic -- albeit great ones -- by male authors. (Come on, they can't help it.)

One more interesting thing that Hrdy adds is that science in her field is limited because neither feminists nor conservatives want to explore the evolutionary basis of womanhood. For conservatives, they know they are baby machines. For feminists, all that matters is that women are now free. Hrdy takes issue with both camps.

This is a fascinating look at evolution with particular reference to the female of the species. Packed with fascinating information about female behaviour through the ages. Descriptions of life among hunter-gatherer groups are particularly interesting. Subjects like infanticide, wetnursing, abandonment of infants, etc are gone into in great detail. I learnt a lot from this book. I particularly enjoyed the splendidly bloodthirsty lullabye from the Napoleonic era printed at the end of this book, my children love it. One small complaint, at one point in this book Ms. Hrdy compares housewives to laboratory rats. Now, I am used to the abuse routinely heaped on housewives, but this is really going a little too far. The big difference between a laboratory rat and a housewife is that I, a housewife, can leave my house any time I like (maybe it's different in America, perhaps housewives are kept locked up there, I don't know), and I frequently do. i have alot more freedom of movement than I would if I were, say, stuck in an office all day long. I quite accept Ms. Hardy' point that children do not have to be cared for full-time by their mothers, but it would be nice if she could refrain from abusing those of us who actually enjoy being full-time carers.

Biology has an agenda. Squirrels, whales, and crickets do not have our language facility, thus they do not have self-help books, preachers, or legions of well-meaning advisors. Yet they are born with the genetically provided rules (feelings) that allow them to be successful squirrels, wonderful whales, and competent crickets. We too have genetically provided rules, which sociobiologists and such are trying to discover. This wonderful book is the author's attempt to explain some of the conditions of motherhood, the relations between mothers and babies, and sometimes tough choices mothers have to make. This work is, in my opinion, magnificent.

NOTE TO REVIEWERS: If one starts off a review with phrases like "goofy liberal", "ranting conservative", or "clueless libertarian", readers like me read no further. Plus my estimation of the reviewer's intelligence is halved.

I find myself raving about this book to every woman (and man) I know. This is the most astounding and thought-provoking book I've read in recent years. Professor Hrdy is an emeritus professor of anthropology at UC Davis who puts the behavior of mothers and infants into an evolutionary context, using a comparative approach and drawing from sociobiology, anthropology, and psychology. I enjoyed this book from my perspectives as a student who did doctoral research in behavioral ecology; as a scientist who's tired of the superficial stereotype of instinctive, selfless maternal devotion; and most profoundly as a mother who's trying somehow to balance the equation of doing good for my family, myself, and the world as an ecologist with a conservation group. I appreciated the fact that she did not just rely on her own research on langur monkeys, but extensively reviewed other studies (and pointed out the dearth of studies that challenge societal assumptions that all mothers should care for every infant under any circumstance). She also entertains different hypotheses instead of just staking out a prescription based on an idealized version from one point in human evolutionary history (i.e. romanticizing hunter-gatherer societies), as seen in anthropologist Meredith Small's "Our Babies, Ourselves", which is also a wonderful book, but lacks the breadth of Hrdy's scholarship.

I frequently read this book as I rocked and nursed my infant son, which made everything more vivid to me. Hrdy writes with grace and humor about topics such as the origins of lactation (the rapture and thrall of oxytocin), the sensual (and hormonal) appeal of infants (so luscious you want to eat `em up). I was fascinated by the many ways that mothers seek to secure resources for their children (such as the tradition of godparents, or women's "unnatural" ambitions in the workplace). But reading the tragic chapters in European history of unsuccessful wet-nursing and wholescale infant abandonment while nursing my baby was almost more than I could bear.

One theme Hrdy reiterates throughout the book is how mothers throughout history forge workable compromises between infant needs and maternal ambition. She shares her experiences as a mother and scientist, and reflections from other women in the field. I found myself cheering "Yes!" in her final chapters, when she steers the debate of working mothers away from the gender politics of "Is it bad for infants when mothers work?" to the more critical question "How can we ensure that infants are cared for as lovingly and securely as kin?" whether that's by the mother or 'allomothers' [relatives or helpers who care like mothers]. "All early caregivers become the emotional equivalents of kin. Any caretaker is capable of communicating the message infants desperately seek - `You are wanted and will not be set aside'. (p. 509)" While the mother is uniquely equipped to meet that need, with her physical contact, her scent, her milk, she's not the only one who can answer when an infant seeks "the meeting eyes of love." Hrdy has written a passionate and scholarly book that is both an engaging read as well as a profoundly enlightening look into human nature. I cannot recommend this more highly.

I got the book and it was a little more elementary than I wanted. It did however have some good pictures of different rocks, I will now be able to tell some rocks when I tumble or pick up to tumble

This book is great and very informative. It is easy to read and look info up in--any age could understand it. This book really "rocks"!!

This is an excellent beginning book on the basics of rocks. It describes the different kinds of rocks, tells how they are formed, and gives descriptions of various rocks. The back contains a section for "field notes" where a young collector can keep a record of rocks collected. I read this to my five year old granddaughter and she enjoyed it very much and we both learned a lot. It would be appropriate for an older child also. Good science presently in a clear manner.

It's ok - I like the stickers with the different names and pictures of rocks. It is much smaller than I thought it would be. It also seems to have a little too many words and too few pictures for the age group I was expecting it to be for. After Christmas I'll know for sure if my nephew will ever look at it.

This is not the be all, end all of rock books and rock identification books. This is a great introduction to rocks and rock hounding. It explains the different types of rocks. The pictures are clear and enhance the text and make this book a nice book for first time explorers or young rock hunters.