Table of Contents

1. Science as a Way of Learning: A Guide to the Natural World

2. Fundamental Building Blocks: Chemistry, Water, and pH

3. Life’s Components: Biological Molecules

4. Life’s Home: The Cell

5. Life’s Border: The Plasma Membrane

6. Life’s Mainspring: An Introduction to Energy

7. Vital Harvest: Deriving Energy from Food

8. The Green World’s Gift: Photosynthesis

9. The Links in Life’s Chain: Genetics and Cell Division

10. Preparing for Sexual Reproduction: Meiosis

11. The First Geneticist: Mendel and His Discoveries

12. Units of Heredity: Chromosomes and Inheritance

13. Passing On Life’s Information: DNA Structure and Replication

14. How Proteins Are Made: Genetic Transcription, Translation, and Regulation

15. The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be: Biotechnology

16. An Introduction to Evolution: Charles Darwin, Evolutionary Thought, and the Evidence for Evolution

17. The Means of Evolution: Microevolution

18. The Outcomes of Evolution: Macroevolution

19. A Slow Unfolding: The History of Life on Earth

20. Arriving Late, Traveling Far: The Evolution of Human Beings

21. Viruses, Bacteria, Archaea, and Protists: The Diversity of Life 1

22. Fungi: The Diversity of Life 2

23. Animals: The Diversity of Life 3

24. Plants: The Diversity of Life 4

25. The Angiosperms: Form and Function in Flowering Plants

26: Body Support and Movement: The Integumentary, Skeletal, and Muscular Systems

27. Communication and Control 1: The Nervous System

28. Communication and Control 2: The Endocrine System

29. Defending the Body: The Immune System

30. Transport and Exchange 1: Blood and Breath

31. Transport and Exchange 2: Digestion, Nutrition, and Elimination

32. An Amazingly Detailed Script: Animal Development

33. How the Baby Came to Be: Human Reproduction

34. An Interactive Living World 1: Populations in Ecology

35. An Interactive Living World 2: Communities in Ecology

36. An Interactive Living World 3: Ecosystems and Biomes

About the Author

David Krogh has been writing about science for 27 years in newspapers, magazines, books, and for educational institutions. He is the author of Smoking: The Artificial Passion, an account of the pharmacological and cultural motivations behind the use of tobacco, which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science and Technology. In 1994, he began work on what would become Biology: A Guide to the Natural World, and in 1999 he completed its first edition. Since then, he has produced three more editions of A Guide to the Natural World along with a second textbook, A Brief Guide to Biology. He holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and history from the University of Missouri.