Anatomy and Physiology 2e
This book was comprehensive, covering the topics expected in a majors-level A&P book. It began with basic cell chemistry, progressed to tissues, and then moved through system-by-system coverage of the body. The breakdown of topics was novel in some cases--for example putting reflexes under "somatic nerves" rather than spinal cord as in most books. Also, I enjoyed seeing special chapters on aging and human genetics.
The glossary and index were complete and I didn't see any major omissions.
The content seemed accurate (I'm not an A&P scholar, so I can't judge every detail). I didn't see claring errors and noticed no bias. The only part someone could claim was a bias was the us of U.S. data (for example, to show the prevalence of different blood types). I'm not sure if this book will be used outside the U.S., but if so, that chart would seem out of place.
Content was up-to-date and make sense in flow and the way chapters were arranged. The chapter topics could easilly be changed or updated without affecting the rest of the text.
The text was clear and accessible. I enjoyed how some medical terms were quickly connected to "everyday" terms to provide additional relevance to students. At times, the writing seemed to change from "majors level" to "non-majors level" in terms of the words and phrasing. Also, the overall writing tone seemed to change at times between sections and chapters. Possibly this is due to having multiple authors creating this work.
As mentioned above, the text flow, tone, and phrasing changed several times in the text. This did affect consistency but unlikely to be noticed by a student over a whole year, just a reviewer reading the whole thing at one time.
Additionally, the use of illustrations shows the same changes over the book--some chapters are only diagrams, some use photos, and some use slides. It would have been nicer if each chapter used the same types of images. Again, this may be due to authorship. I can't think of a pedagogical reason to do this. For specific examples, the Integumentary system does a fantastic job of matching simple illustrations with slide photos of the same structures. A student could use this text in lab or lecture and gets a "real life" view of the structures. In the chapter on bones, it's only diagrams; no pictures. Wouldn't a picture of a skull help a student match the diagram with the real thing?
I teach both the year-long "majors" A&P and the half-year "intro" A&P series. This book's modularity would make it possible for me to use sections for a 100-level course without having to tell students exact pages and sentences to skip to make the content reasonable. Likewise, I can see chapters and sections that can be rearranged in a different order for a class without affecting what's being taught. This contrasts with some texts that use an overarching story and by nature, can't be used in a different order that how written. This modularity makes the book easy to use in different courses, in different ways, for different reasons.
I liked how the book's topics were arranged. I prefer the system-by-system, superficial-to-deep approach. Although novel to me, I did like the way the nervous system was broken up beyond the usual CNS-PNS-ANS of most books. I could see this text's way of doing it easier for students to learn and easier for me to teach those difficult concepts.
I reviewed the .pdf version and was not aware of any interface problems specifically to tha format.
A few things did catch my eye but they were more problems with a particular layout on a page rather than the text overall. For example, the chart for the hormones begins at the end of a page and continues on to the next page. There was room to put the whole thing on one page, so why not do that? Students would learn the chart much better if it were in one piece. Likewise, a few diagrams and pictures were on different pages than when referenced. Perhaps a little different editing would make the picture appear on the same page as it's discussion.
I didn't see any major grammatical errors.
I didn't see anything offensive. As stated before, this book references U.S. data so might be a problem in other countries. Also, disease listings tend to focus on typical U.S. problems and avoids some of the emergent, tropical disorders that might have relevance to non-European readers.