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Note: This is for the General Principles (a.k.a. M1 material) book. I also purchased the Organ Systems book, but I'm not sure if I'm going to read it (probably not). If I do, though, I'll make another post in this thread with that review.
Hi everyone,
I made a thread asking for opinions about this book, and since nothing useful was provided, I thought I would share my opinions. I looked around a little more and decided this book was going to be useful for me, so I picked it up and spent the week reading it (from cover to cover). Here are my thoughts:
PROS:
-Provides more context and a better framework for the knowledge than little FA does. This is critical for me - I'm just not good at memorizing facts if I don't have a larger picture overview of what's going on.
-The text is designed to be read by someone that has absolutely zero knowledge of the topics. This was useful for me because I remembered almost nothing from the M1 material, which is why I ultimately decided to get this book. With some exceptions (see below), I thought the text does a great job of explaining things clearly while not going into insane levels of detail. I think the best way to describe this book is that it would be the child if FA and Big Robbins were somehow able to get together.
-The biggest strength of the text IMO is making connections with other material. FA obviously does this pretty well also, but I felt like FABS was particularly good at it. Once again, it gives a nice framework for the knowledge which I will now go fill in with FA and UWorld.
CONS:
-This is definitely not the most efficient way to learn this material, and I will freely admit that. I've been studying 8:30-5:00 and it took me Monday-Friday to finally get through the whole thing (whereas you could get through the corresponding sections in FA in a couple of days going at a snail's pace). This sacrifice was worth it to me as I have 7 weeks to study and my knowledge of M1 material was extremely poor, however that's something to keep in mind if you're thinking of using this text. I don't think I would recommend it if you find FA sufficient to relearn the material (I didn't).
-The quality of the sections is HIGHLY variable. The biochemistry section was an absolute joke - I can't believe they published that. Typos abound, and there were some points where the main text and/or figure legends conflicted with what was being demonstrated in the figures. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's useless, however I was actually irritated with how many typos there were, something that doesn't usually bother me. There were a few errors in all of the sections, but biochemistry was by far the worst.
-One common complaint I saw about the text (and that I agree with) is that it, for some reason, fails to cover information that is covered in FA. It's not a lot - I'd say FABS covers 90% of what you see in FA - but I still don't understand how that even happens. It seems to me using FA as a topic outline + more detail = FABS. Clearly that's not correct, though. I don't think this is a deal-breaker or really even that big of a deal since the amount of "missing" material is fairly small, but it's something to keep in mind. Even if you do read this text, you'll still be picking stuff up when you get back to little FA.
Overall, this is a mixed recommendation for me. If, like me, you remember very little/no M1 material, then I think this is a great way to get refreshed on the material before diving in to straight memorization mode if you have the time to dedicate to getting through this text. If that's NOT the case, though, then I would say to save your time and use other sources to give you more efficient review while doing questions.
A couple of the sections though are EXTREMELY well done, and I would recommend them to everyone because I think FA isn't as good as it could be on these topics. It's not worth buying the books (as I did) just for those sections, however if you look hard enough you can always find PDF copies of the books. Here's a general section-by-section review:
-"Anatomy and histology:" decent but highly incomplete; I'm not sure how they determined which systems to talk about and which systems to leave out (I'm guessing whatever gets asked the most), but it seemed pretty random and definitely not comprehensive. Lots of discussion on the basics of cell biology, basic organization of tissues and organs, some anatomy thrown in, and then details on random systems. It's as if they took the intro section of the Musculoskeletal section in FA, threw in some histology, and called it a day. Again, decent, just incomplete.
-Behavioral sciences: extremely well done, and one of the sections that I would say is worth looking over no matter who you are. Lots of figures, examples, explanations, etc. that are lacking in FA are provided here, and I think those ultimately give a better picture of the topics. I would definitely recommend you read this section in addition to FA.
-Biochemistry: as mentioned before, terrible. Overall I think I still benefited from reading this over diving straight into FA, but the typos and glaring errors are extremely irritating. It's also very obvious that there were multiple writers within the section, as some subsections are better than others, with the worst being poorly written prose that isn't even in complete sentences (???). It's as if they copy and pasted FA into this text and said, "good enough." I understand biochem, like microbio, is largely a "memorize this list of facts" kind of topic, but there really isn't an excuse for how poorly that section was done.
-Embryology: EXTREMELY well done - definitely recommend looking this over as FA doesn't cover this very well IMO. FABS provides great figures and explanations to go through the material - something I think FA is largely lacking.
-Microbiology: decent, but this is just a hard topic to write on since it's so much memorization. I'm glad I read this section, but it's basically an expanded version of the FA section, and at 200 pages (the same length of the biochem section) it was a pain in the ass to slog through. Surprisingly I thought FA did a much better job of providing picture of all the microbes - something FABS was, for some inexplicable reason, extremely sparse with.
-Immunology: also well done, though not great enough to recommend over just reading the FA section. It's pretty short, though, so worth reading if FA doesn't provide enough detail for you.
-Pathology: like the FA section, very short and simple. Pretty comparable to FA but with a little more explanation/detail that I found helpful.
-Pharmacology: pretty comparable to FA - didn't really find it that helpful versus simply reading the FA Section.
If you have any specific questions or would like me to expand on some stuff, let me know. Hope this was helpful!
Hi everyone,
I made a thread asking for opinions about this book, and since nothing useful was provided, I thought I would share my opinions. I looked around a little more and decided this book was going to be useful for me, so I picked it up and spent the week reading it (from cover to cover). Here are my thoughts:
PROS:
-Provides more context and a better framework for the knowledge than little FA does. This is critical for me - I'm just not good at memorizing facts if I don't have a larger picture overview of what's going on.
-The text is designed to be read by someone that has absolutely zero knowledge of the topics. This was useful for me because I remembered almost nothing from the M1 material, which is why I ultimately decided to get this book. With some exceptions (see below), I thought the text does a great job of explaining things clearly while not going into insane levels of detail. I think the best way to describe this book is that it would be the child if FA and Big Robbins were somehow able to get together.
-The biggest strength of the text IMO is making connections with other material. FA obviously does this pretty well also, but I felt like FABS was particularly good at it. Once again, it gives a nice framework for the knowledge which I will now go fill in with FA and UWorld.
CONS:
-This is definitely not the most efficient way to learn this material, and I will freely admit that. I've been studying 8:30-5:00 and it took me Monday-Friday to finally get through the whole thing (whereas you could get through the corresponding sections in FA in a couple of days going at a snail's pace). This sacrifice was worth it to me as I have 7 weeks to study and my knowledge of M1 material was extremely poor, however that's something to keep in mind if you're thinking of using this text. I don't think I would recommend it if you find FA sufficient to relearn the material (I didn't).
-The quality of the sections is HIGHLY variable. The biochemistry section was an absolute joke - I can't believe they published that. Typos abound, and there were some points where the main text and/or figure legends conflicted with what was being demonstrated in the figures. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's useless, however I was actually irritated with how many typos there were, something that doesn't usually bother me. There were a few errors in all of the sections, but biochemistry was by far the worst.
-One common complaint I saw about the text (and that I agree with) is that it, for some reason, fails to cover information that is covered in FA. It's not a lot - I'd say FABS covers 90% of what you see in FA - but I still don't understand how that even happens. It seems to me using FA as a topic outline + more detail = FABS. Clearly that's not correct, though. I don't think this is a deal-breaker or really even that big of a deal since the amount of "missing" material is fairly small, but it's something to keep in mind. Even if you do read this text, you'll still be picking stuff up when you get back to little FA.
Overall, this is a mixed recommendation for me. If, like me, you remember very little/no M1 material, then I think this is a great way to get refreshed on the material before diving in to straight memorization mode if you have the time to dedicate to getting through this text. If that's NOT the case, though, then I would say to save your time and use other sources to give you more efficient review while doing questions.
A couple of the sections though are EXTREMELY well done, and I would recommend them to everyone because I think FA isn't as good as it could be on these topics. It's not worth buying the books (as I did) just for those sections, however if you look hard enough you can always find PDF copies of the books. Here's a general section-by-section review:
-"Anatomy and histology:" decent but highly incomplete; I'm not sure how they determined which systems to talk about and which systems to leave out (I'm guessing whatever gets asked the most), but it seemed pretty random and definitely not comprehensive. Lots of discussion on the basics of cell biology, basic organization of tissues and organs, some anatomy thrown in, and then details on random systems. It's as if they took the intro section of the Musculoskeletal section in FA, threw in some histology, and called it a day. Again, decent, just incomplete.
-Behavioral sciences: extremely well done, and one of the sections that I would say is worth looking over no matter who you are. Lots of figures, examples, explanations, etc. that are lacking in FA are provided here, and I think those ultimately give a better picture of the topics. I would definitely recommend you read this section in addition to FA.
-Biochemistry: as mentioned before, terrible. Overall I think I still benefited from reading this over diving straight into FA, but the typos and glaring errors are extremely irritating. It's also very obvious that there were multiple writers within the section, as some subsections are better than others, with the worst being poorly written prose that isn't even in complete sentences (???). It's as if they copy and pasted FA into this text and said, "good enough." I understand biochem, like microbio, is largely a "memorize this list of facts" kind of topic, but there really isn't an excuse for how poorly that section was done.
-Embryology: EXTREMELY well done - definitely recommend looking this over as FA doesn't cover this very well IMO. FABS provides great figures and explanations to go through the material - something I think FA is largely lacking.
-Microbiology: decent, but this is just a hard topic to write on since it's so much memorization. I'm glad I read this section, but it's basically an expanded version of the FA section, and at 200 pages (the same length of the biochem section) it was a pain in the ass to slog through. Surprisingly I thought FA did a much better job of providing picture of all the microbes - something FABS was, for some inexplicable reason, extremely sparse with.
-Immunology: also well done, though not great enough to recommend over just reading the FA section. It's pretty short, though, so worth reading if FA doesn't provide enough detail for you.
-Pathology: like the FA section, very short and simple. Pretty comparable to FA but with a little more explanation/detail that I found helpful.
-Pharmacology: pretty comparable to FA - didn't really find it that helpful versus simply reading the FA Section.
If you have any specific questions or would like me to expand on some stuff, let me know. Hope this was helpful!
