just get this book! It has everything you need to get started. Building upon Scott Freeman’s unique narrative style that incorporates the Socratic approach and draws you into thinking like a biologist, the Fourth Edition has been carefully refined to motivate and support a broader range of learners as they are introduced to new concepts and encouraged to develop and practice new skills. If like me you are from a non-biology field, and find yourself needing a biology primer. If this is a required text for your course.
Students reading it are guaranteed to come away with a firm grasp of the fundamentals, and also new found inspiration and appreciation from their learning that may be the catalyst they needed to motivate them towards becoming outstanding biological scientists or whatever other professional related to biological sciences. In an industry where we have a sea of mediocre introductory texts for first-year university students, most of which probably stifle the enthusiasm of the students overloaded with poorly organized and synthesized information, this book stands out as a refreshing change. You will forgive me if that sounds like a hyperbole, but based on my greater than a decade worth of studying different text-books from nearly every field of science and engineering, this one stands out as the most clearly written, thoughtfully organized, masterfully diagrammed, and ingeniously integrated with latest research in its field. This is a kind of book that can not only change the life of the students using it, but transform an entire body of science by being a welcoming gateway for freshmen students.