Concepts of Biology
This provides an excellent level of detail for a non-majors biology course. Only a couple of areas were lacking (e.g. a very brief overview of membrane structure, and no mention of niche theory when discussing competition). Discussion of protists and fungi was from the perspective of their relevance to humans rather than a breakdown of their taxonomy, etc., but I think that's appropriate for a non-majors course. There is a glossary of terms at the end of each chapter, and it has a clickable index.
I found one inaccuracy: atomic mass is not the same as mass number, despite what the book says on p.33. That being said, the hard-copy textbook that I currently use makes that mistake as well as several crucial other errors, so this OpenStax book ranks higher in accuracy.
This text uses a combination of tried-and-true classical examples of the kind seen in almost every biology textbook (e.g. sickle cell anemia and other genetic disorders) and more updated examples that younger students may be more familiar with or find more relevant. It appears that updates would be easy to implement.
This was an easy read--a nice conversational style that isn't dry or boring to read. Terms were explained clearly and concisely, and plenty of clarifying examples were given.
This text is consistent, both in the way it is laid out and in the terminology that is used.
Each chapter's sections have multiple subheadings, making the information easy to digest in small chunks. Sections are not overly long.
This text is organized very well. It is written in such a way that one section flows logically into the next section, both within a chapter and between chapters. Each chapter is organized in the same way, making the text easier to navigate as students move through the text.
The only issue that I noted was that because of the placement of some figures, there were a few pages that had one or two lines of text on them, and then the rest of the page was white space, before the figure would appear on the next page. I feel that the spacing could have been managed better to avoid the wasted space.
I found no grammatical or spelling errors.
Many of the examples were the old standards. It would be nice to see an example of a genetic mutation other than sickle cell anemia (the go-to example of all biology texts!), or at least a more in-depth discussion about how different ethnic groups have different probabilities of certain genetic disorders. Otherwise, the examples seemed to be adequately diverse. There is a great discussion of the value of science in chapter 1.
There are lots of figures--not always the most sophisticated diagrams but they are functional and easy to read. There are also links to animations, simulations, and videos, so that students can engage with the material in more ways than just reading it. The authors also included attention-grabbing boxes titled "careers in action", "evolution in action", etc., to give more real-world context to the concepts being covered.
Overall, this text is as good, if not better, than the one I am currently using to teach my course. It would be suitable for any non-majors biology course.