Essentials of Biology is an essentials level introductory general biology text for non-majors students that combines Dr. Sylvia Mader's superb and accessible writing style with clear visuals, a comprehensive learning system, and abundant supplements. Essentials of Biology emphasizes the relevance of biology to students' lives within a framework of biodiversity and basic-concepts coverage of all main areas of general biology.

The three key features of Essentials of Biology include:

1. Dr. Sylvia Mader's succinct, precise writing style. Sylvia's writing is what has earned her a reputation as one of the most successful introductory biology textbook author ever, and it is what will be most compelling in this text.

2. A comprehensive learning system to help students get the most out of each chapter's text content and an incredible instructional visual program.

3. Our package would not be complete without our robust media technology package with quality animations, digitized videos, OLC, and student interactive CD-ROM.

Each chapter features numerous pedagogical tools that are carefully developed to help students grasp challenging concepts. These include:

-A numbered outline at the beginning of each chapter with accompanying concept statements for the main topics in each chapter.

- Check Your Progress questions and answers at the end of each major heading within the chapter to help students assess their understanding of the previous section.

- The boldface terms in each chapter are page referenced in an Understanding the Terms list at the end of the chapter, and a matching exercise allows students to test their knowledge of the terms.

- A Thinking Scientifically section at the end of each chapter gives students the opportunity to use critical thinking skills to respond to scientific questions.

- The Bioethical Issue at the end of each chapter briefly discusses a controversial issue confronting society and poses questions to help students fully consider the issue and arrive at an opinion.

-Numbered summary at the end of the chapter to help students review.

-Testing Yourself objective questions at the end of the chapter to help students prepare for the test.

Dr. Sylvia Mader is the best-selling author of introductory biology textbooks. Other books she has authored for WCB include: Inquiry Into Life, Human Biology, Introduction to Biology, and Understanding Human Anatomy and Physiology.