Developmental Biology [With CDROM] [Hardcover]

I used this book as a textbook for a senior-level class in Developmental Biology. Gilbert is the standard reference, and I had used his 2nd edition book years ago when I had Embryology myself. Someone else ordered the book (before I was hired) but I was relieved when I found out that it was Gilbert's text.

However, much has changed since the second edition. One bewildering aspect is that, although development arguably begins at the point of gamete fusion (fertilization), this is not covered until Chapter 7... there is half a semester's worth of material before one even gets to fertilization. This strikes me as too long; many of the concepts that precede it are really best handled afterwards (such as cell-cell signaling). I note that fertilization made its appearance in Chapter 2 of the 2nd edition, so it is not just my personal view that this is the right place to begin -- it used to be Gilbert's!

Beyond the strange choice of sequence, I found that this book focuses too much on idiosyncratic details and not enough on over-arching concepts. For instance, Gilbert spends pages upon pages describing in detail one specific cascade reaction after another, without ever really "zooming out" to generally address the importance of cascade reactions overall. In other words, he spends so much time focusing on the detailed nuances of the leaves on every tree, that he misses the forest.

My students universally despised this book, and complained that it was near impossible to follow or understand. They said that they got much more out of my lectures. But the only difference was that I spent time poring over the book (as I am not really a Developmental Biologist myself) and reading it carefully, and then making outlines of the general concepts that Gilbert was illustrating with his details. I could then present the concepts to the students, and tell them that the book has examples.

I really believe that a text book should be organized around concepts and biological processes, not the details of a thousand examples. Examples will be forgotten over time, and can be looked up in any case, but the understanding of the overall concept is what one most needs to obtain in class, and from a text book. This edition of the book is really just a compendium of examples from the literature, and not a textbook of concepts.

I know that Gilbert is a "standard" text in this field, but I am nevertheless exploring other Developmental Biology texts for next year, because this one just does not do the job that a good basic text book should do.

I'm a college student and bought this book for my developmental biology class. I thought this was a satisfactory book. I agree with the reviewer steven viscido; the book does, in fact, puts an extraordinary emphasis on details, but it does also elaborates somewhat on concepts but not to the extent that it covers on details. I don't mind if there is too much detail, but the real issue I have is that sometimes when you are reading the book, you would get "lost" in whatever topic you are reading. As an anology, its like going into a forest that has trees with branches, and focusing too much on the branches would make you unconscious of the tree and if there is too much focus on the tree you would forget that you are in the forest. A similar type of thing in this book.
It does take an extra amount of will to memorize all the details such as the proteins involved, stages, experiments, processes, etc. in every chapter. Nevertheless, I'm very much satisfied with this book, I learned a lot of wonderful things. I wanted to give this a 3.5 stars but unfortunately amazon won't let me.

This was a required text for my graduate Developmental Molecular Genetics course at UCI. This book provided sufficient background so I could keep up and understand the assigned scientific journal articles. The way the textbook reads is more for an undergraduate course but if you never had such an opportunity this will keep you up to speed for graduate coursework.
Overall the way it reads can sometimes be annoying as the author will put too many details. However, this is exactly what anyone going into graduate school should be ready for- scientific articles read the same way if not worse. As stated is a good intro to the material and will provide the tools to read journal articles.