Required and Suggested Textbooks

This section will be sent to you in the Pre-Arrival Information Pack.

Required Textbooks

We recognize the pressures on the finances of new students so we have tried to reduce the amount of textbooks required for purchase to a minimum (for the Harry Potter fans – none of us are like Gilderoy Lockhart). We expect though that you will have your own copies of the following (prices are a  guide only):

• Molecular Biology of the Cell (5th Edition). Alberts, B., Johnson, A., Lewis, J., Raff, M., Roberts, K. and Walters, P.  Publ. Garland. ISBN .  (£60).
• Medical Physiology (2nd Edition) Boron, W and Boulpaep, E. Publ. Saunders. ISBN 978-1-4160-3115-4 (£60-65)
• Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain. (3rd Edition). Bear, M., Connors, B., Paradiso, M. Publ. Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins. ISBN 0781760038 (£34).
• Pharmacology (7th Edition) Rang H. et al Publ. Churchill Livingstone. ISBN 978-0-7020-3471-8 (£40.00)

Some of these books are quite advanced and may look daunting to a first year student, however they are intended to be used for several modules in both Level 1 and Level 2, with lasting benefit into Level 3 where emphasis shifts to primary source material e.g. journal articles. We hope that these purchases will be the most cost-effective for you.

It may well be worthwhile waiting until you arrive in Sheffield before buying any textbooks as students from previous years often sell-on their textbooks, and Sheffield’s Blackwells Bookshop may well be able to bundle books together at a lower price. However, if you see a good deal anywhere I would take it.

Suggested Textbooks

We will also make use of a number of other books over the course of Level 1 and Level 2. We will focus spending our library budget on books such as these, but no University Library ever has one book per student so you may prefer to buy your own! The following is a non-exhaustive list.

• Cell Biology. Pollard, T.D. and Earnshaw. Publ. W.C. Saunders. 2nd Edition. ISBN 9781416022558. A less threatening alternative to Alberts, but may lack depth for Levels 2 and 3. Some BMS151 lecturers use images from here. (£54.99)
• Practical Skills in Biomolecular Sciences (3rd Edition).  Reed, R., Holmes, D., Weyers, J. and Jones, A. Publ. Longman Press. ISBN 9780132391153 (£30). Referred to quite a lot in Level 1 practicals but not an essential purchase.
• Principles of Development. (4th Ed.) Wolpert, L. And Tickle C.. Publ. Oxford University Press. 2011. 978-0-19-954907-8. Recommended for Level 1 and 2 developmental biology modules. Very close to being a compulsory text (£37)

Or: 

• Essential Developmental Biology. Slack, J. Publ. Blackwell Science, 2005.  2nd ed ISBN 9781405122160. (£34.99) Not as widely used as Wolpert, but covers useful ground, and some lecturers may prefer it for some aspects of Level 1 and Level 2 modules.
• Basic Pathology: An Introduction to the Mechanisms of Disease. (4th Edition). Lakhani, S., Dilly, S., Finlayson, C. and Dogan, A. Publ. Hodder Arnold, 2009. ISBN 9780340950036. Really well written book that will be the basis for BMS106 but isn’t used on other BMS modules. £26.99

Background Textbooks.

If you have not recently gone through A Level Biology (or even if you have) you might want to think about a basic biology book as well as the above.  Neither of these alternatives is at all essential (and other editions would be fine) but if you want to brush up basic principles….

• Biology (8th Edition).  Campbell N. and Reece J.  Publ. Benjamin Cummings.  ISBN 9780321544247 (£50)
• Biology (12th Edition). Starr C. and Taggart R. Publ. Thomson.  ISBN 9780495557968 (£48)