The Basics of General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry
This textbook includes all of the essential content needed for a one-semester General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry course. Each of the twenty chapters is divided into concept sections containing learning objectives, examples, skill-building exercises, concept review exercises, and answers. In addition, each chapter includes appealing features such as the Opening Essay, To Your Health, and Looking Closer that help students make connections with the chemical concepts presented. Although the subject matter is well presented, items such as a table of contents, glossary, and index are absent in this textbook.
The material in the text is accurate, however, some typos exist. Periodically, throughout the text, a reference is made to a figure, but a non-working hyperlink is provided instead.
The chemistry content within the textbook should remain appropriate for a long period of time. The information in the chapter Opening Essays help the students see the relevance of the chemical concepts. Just a few items may need updating. For example, the Opening Essay for chapter 16 contains diabetes statistics that are outdated and the MyPyramid food guidance system in chapter 4 has been replaced by the MyPlate food guidance system.
The chemical concepts are clearly written and are at an appropriate level for GOB students.
The framework of the sections within each chapter remains consistent throughout the textbook. Each section contains learning objective(s), skill building exercises, concept reviews, end of section exercises, and answers. In addition, each chapter consistently contains features such as the Opening Essay, To Your Health, and Looking Closer, which makes the chapter more appealing for students.
The modularity of the textbook is excellent. The chapters can be easily rearranged to enable a different presentation order of the material if necessary. Every chapter is divided into concept sections with every section containing learning objective(s), exercises, and answers. Having the answers attached to each section is more convenient than consistently referring to the end of the chapter or the end of the textbook.
The overall organization of the chapters and the sections within the textbook is very good. There is a logical flow from the foundational material through to the more complex material.
Due to the PDF format, the biggest interface issue is the poor maneuverability around the textbook. The need to scroll and the lack of table contents makes it difficult to navigate within the textbook. A linked access to the table of contents would be helpful. I found the inclusion of non-working hyperlinks as references to be a bit disruptive to the flow of material within a sentence. In addition, a few images are too small and many images are blurry (although readable).
I found no grammatical errors within the text.
I did not find the text to be culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. However, the text lacked photos which could serve as a means to include a variety of races, ethnicities, backgrounds, and different genders.
In general, I found the textbook to be an enjoyable read and I feel that it is written at a very appropriate level for GOB students. I liked that the learning objectives are boldly presented at the beginning of each section. Each section is well written and interesting (due to the inclusion of health and consumer information). My suggestions for improvement are: to use more diagrams and figures; to include photos to make the text more visually appealing; and to use more bold subheadings to highlight and draw attention to concepts.