Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Horrible Text July 28, 2008
Poorly written and organized. One of the worst texts I have had for a class, it makes things more confusing instead of explaining. It covers many topics instead of explaining anything in detail.
 Fun to read August 17, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Fun to read?! A textbook!? That's right. I'm reading this for my own edification, not for a class, and I'm enjoying it. This book is amazingly well organized. It flows from topic to topic, and learning is enhanced. With most textbooks, you know the routine. Read it, hope the teacher can explain it better, then reorganize the material in your notes into some more understandable fashion. With Geosystems, it's just "read and learn."
I used to hate geography, now I love it. For more detailed info on this book, read the excellent Amazon reviews by steele and nmatzke.
This is a World-Class DVD for Serious People June 30, 2007
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Edit of 5 Feb 08 to add emphasis comment and links.
Coment of 5 Feb 08: This amazing professional product has pride of place in my 3000 volum library. It is the permanet owner of the teacher's lecturn, always open to chapter. I include an image aboe to emphasize this point. This book and its author, are GOLD STANDARD.
This is the only DVD I watch weekly on background, stopping my work at each song. This is an incrediblly gifted rendition and integraration of reality art, technology, and directoriaq craft. Wow, wow, wow.
I picked this gem up at the University of Colorado bookstore. I do not have the time for a third graduate degree, but if I did, it would be in Environmental Science.
Unlike most textbooks, this hardcover version is worth every penny, and the paperback is a bargain. This is a large book, 8.5 x 11, crammed with photos, extraordinarily well organized, illustrated, and presented, and it includes a CD ROM that the previous owner never opened that I find to be priceless: a series of illustrations and animations keyed to every chapter, with a non-punitive self-test. Also provided free are an online study guide. Supporting materials include a Student Study Guide and a Student Lecture Notebook that provides illustrations and diagrams to be integrated into the class binder. All are identified by ISBNs, but if you miss page xviii, which outlines "the package," you will be unaware of the other resources.
Each chapter has the base material, a focus study, a news item, and more often than not, a career link. Each chapter ends with self-study questions. My bottom line: this book, taken seriously, *is* a self-taught graduate program in Geosystems.
The only think I do not see in the book, and it may be in the study guide, is "Recommended Reading." BUT a complete array of current sources are fully cited as easily visible footnotes on most pages.
The only gap in this book, and it could probably be quickly developed as a supplementary paperback guide and CD, is the avoidance of an integrated discussion of costs and consequences. The entire study of Geosystems is irrelevant unless it can be explained to people in "true cost" terms. While the book excels, for example, at showing the severe drop in aquifers across specific places, it does not provide a guide to calculating current and future costs to society for ignoring these problems and allowing corporations and individuals to continue to externalize to the public and to future generations, the costs of being stupid and greedy today.
First rate book. One of the most serious textbooks, one of the best illustrated, explained, supported, and presented, I have every seen. For serious adults and emerging adults only--this is not a book, nor a class, for dolts just trying to meet a requirement for graduation.
Other recommended book:
High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
The Future of Life
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Ecology of Commerce
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble
Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author
A well done text. Top notch photos and diagrams. March 21, 2007
I thought this was well organized and easy to understand for the most part. There were only a few parts (pages, really) that were sort of ho-hum. The diagrams and photos were top notch and really went well with the text. This text would be interesting to read just for the sake of it. I don't have another text to compare it to, which I imagine is a good thing. I've had other texts that were so bad that I only used them for the problem sets (Zill's diff eq text!) but the only external source I used with this book was the internet --and that was usually because something in the book sparked more curiosity.
I would have preferred more technical information (such as wave dynamics or quantative analysis) but I do understand this is an intro text and that I am a math geek.
Our instructor combined this text with the geography of the Pacific NW where I reside, and I certainly do look at the landscape quite differently after taking this course. For that, I give it a five.
Kudos to Christopherson for a well designed book.
Schoolbook with pleasant pictures November 4, 2006
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I know I bought this book for a class I'm taking and while the data is something I need to learn what I really like about this book is all the beautiful photography both in the book and in the accompaning CD have on them.
The authors wife is a professional photographer and he uses that to illustrate the concepts with asthetics.
Is the book a bit of a hard read? Yes but again it's a college level textbook so this isn't surprising but if you have to buy it for class don't despair you'll have a book full of beautiful pictures of mother nature to look at well after the college class is done.
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