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graywacke's review against another edition
informative
4.0
The information is terrific, maybe exceptional. The tone is great. The structure, ok. Anatomy has a lot of parts, and Roberts wants to cover everything. So chapters have a tendency to go on and on. But if you're ok tolerating that, you will be rewarded with ideas on the human spine, brain, the muscles we only use when run, the human trick on turning our palms up (other primates can't do that, and certainly not, say, you dog), all the steps it takes to throw, and so on. Not to mention, all the evolutionary theory behind this all.
greeniezona's review against another edition
informative
4.0
Sort of an impulse purchase, as I hadn't heard anything about this book, but a book about evolution with the improbability of it leading to <I>us</I> as the frame rather than the teleological "people as pinnacle" simplification was an easy sell. Evidently it was an easy sell to my kids, too, as I put this on the bedtime story shelf and one of the kids picked it out.
I love including science non-fiction into family story time, and this was mostly at an appropriate level for our crew (one 10, one 14/15 at the time.) There were a few parts that got a little dry/theoretical, but the diagrams helped. My youngest did get squeamish during the discussion of the development of sex organs, but we all survived.
I hadn't really done much reading on embryology -- on just <I>how</I> an embryo transforms into an actual human, so there was even more new information for me here than I expected.
A fascinating read.
I love including science non-fiction into family story time, and this was mostly at an appropriate level for our crew (one 10, one 14/15 at the time.) There were a few parts that got a little dry/theoretical, but the diagrams helped. My youngest did get squeamish during the discussion of the development of sex organs, but we all survived.
I hadn't really done much reading on embryology -- on just <I>how</I> an embryo transforms into an actual human, so there was even more new information for me here than I expected.
A fascinating read.
overtondaniel60's review against another edition
1.0
It was possibly the most boring book I've ever read!
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