For Biology 101, Life by David Sadava is amazing. I wasn’t even particularly interested in the subject and just needed the course credit, but it was a fascinating page turner and made everything so clear.
I don’t know if this counts as a textbook, but Python for the Absolute Beginner is so good for beginning programming. Python is a great language to learn programming with. This book is just so perfectly paced. It’s the exercises that make it work so well. It increments the difficulty just a smidgeon with each exercise to gradually get you used to more and more concepts.
Second the rec on Sadava. I strongly preferred it to Campbell, the other standard intro bio text, which I found insufficiently precise. I’d go to make an Anki card about some concept, only to find that Campbell’s discussion lacked enough precision for me to state exactly what was going on. Sadly, I haven’t read another biology book (having been quite satisfied with Sadava’s), so I can’t make a Luke-compliant recommendation.
For Biology 101, Life by David Sadava is amazing. I wasn’t even particularly interested in the subject and just needed the course credit, but it was a fascinating page turner and made everything so clear.
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Science-Biology-David-Sadava/dp/1464141266
I don’t know if this counts as a textbook, but Python for the Absolute Beginner is so good for beginning programming. Python is a great language to learn programming with. This book is just so perfectly paced. It’s the exercises that make it work so well. It increments the difficulty just a smidgeon with each exercise to gradually get you used to more and more concepts.
https://www.amazon.com/Python-Programming-Absolute-Beginner-3rd/dp/B00B7RE628/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1470565643&sr=1-1&keywords=python+for+absolute+beginners#navbar
Second the rec on Sadava. I strongly preferred it to Campbell, the other standard intro bio text, which I found insufficiently precise. I’d go to make an Anki card about some concept, only to find that Campbell’s discussion lacked enough precision for me to state exactly what was going on. Sadly, I haven’t read another biology book (having been quite satisfied with Sadava’s), so I can’t make a Luke-compliant recommendation.