Books for C2006/F2402

Textbooks. The page numbers listed on the Schedule refer to the textbooks listed below. There are several copies of each in the Biology Library, and you may be able to get used copies online.
You are not expected to do all the readings in all these books. Which book(s) are right for you will depend on your particular background in biology, your interest in the topic, and the time you have to spend on books. See announcements for some advice on which texts to read.

Becker, Kleinsmith & Hardin, The World of the Cell, 7th ed, Benjamin Cummings, 2009. Copies should be available in the local book stores that carry texts.

This text was used in the first semester. Earlier editions are similar. For approximate pages in the 6th edition, see the schedule from 2008. For pages in earlier editions, see old schedules.

Textbook website (for 4th ed) has quizzes, essay questions, and web links for each chapter. For the later editions, see the CD that comes with the text.

Sadava, Heller, Orians, Purves & Hills, Life, the Science of Biology, , 8th ed. 2006. (Previous editions were by Purves, Sadava, Orians and Heller.)

This text was also used in the first semester. If you have another general bio textbook, such as Campbell or Raven, you can use that instead, but you'll have to figure out yourself which pages cover the lecture material. (That should be pretty easy, since the books have excellent indexes.) If you have the 7th edition of Purves/Sadava, see the schedule from '07. For pages for older editions of Purves see schedules of previous years.

The Lifewire is the book's website. Includes tutorials, quizzes, animations and other activities for each chapter.

Sherwood, Human Physiology: From Cells to Systems; 5th, or 6th ed, Brooks/Cole. This book is highly recommended for the physiology part, but there are lots of other good physiology books. (See supplementary texts, below.)

We'll cover only 25% of this text, at most, so you may want to rely on the copies in the library, or look for a used copy online. If you buy the book, make sure that you do not get Fundamentals of Human Physiology, a shorter, less detailed, book by the same author. Also, if you see a paperback version offered for about $20, that is probably a Study Guide and not the textbook itself.

The textbook web site (4th ed) or 5th ed. or 6th ed. has flashcards to test vocabulary, quizzes, and links to web readings.

Problem book. The problem book for 2009 is available at the Village Copier, on Broadway between 111th & 112th St. Copies will be put on reserve in the Biology Library. (Copies of last year's book -- 6th ed, revised -- are there now.)

Mowshowitz, Problems in Cell Biology, Physiology & Development, 7th ed, 2009.

These problems are based on questions from exams of the past few years. Students who do well in this course consistently say that they benefited from working on the problems that are provided. However it does NOT pay to do these problems in advance. Wait until after the corresponding lecture.

Supplementary texts. If there's something that's not clear in the textbook, or if you want to read more on a particular topic, try one of the texts listed below, which should be available on reserve in the Biology Library.

For Cell & Molecular biology, the books by Wolfe, or Lodish et al, or Alberts et al, or Karp, are all good.

For Physiology, the book by Sherwood is very good, but there are plenty of other good ones. There are excellent texts by Vander et al, Silverthorn, or Fox. Boron & Boulpaaep, Medical Physiology, used in Quantitative Physiology, is good too, but goes into much more detail than necessary on most subjects.

Online Resources

Good online resources are Kimball's online textbook & the Bookshelf at Pubmed.

The Bookshelf at PubMed has online versions of the Lodish and the Alberts books, as well as The Cell - A Molecular Approach by Cooper. Last time I checked, the bookshelf did not include any physiology books, but it includes the complete text of excellent books on cell biology, endocrinology, microbiology, development, immunology, etc. (Generally the next to latest edition is online.) You can search through all these books at once, by typing in a term such as "microtubules", and you'll get links to the pages in each book that mention this term.

There are many additional resources on the web -- animations, pictures, lecture notes, etc. We will try to publish useful links as we go; if you find any, please send the URL's to Dr. M.