I love this book! The illustrations are just adorable--Bobak really captured the finicky, feline ways of a cat on the prowl. It's one of my kids' favorites, too--I wish the publisher would put it back in print. Get a copy of it if you can.

This book made medical microbiology a lot easier. It is concise and written to teach. It is helpful because it explains conditions in every day language. My study group and I used this book and the following which is also available on amazon.com:
Microbiology Study Guide: Key Review Questions and Answers by Patrick Leonardi (ISBN: 0971999635)
The second book helped me prepare for the type of questions on my medical microbiology exams. I also used both these books as helpful references for the microbiology portion of the USLME 1. It just goes to show, everyone in my study group not only got high grades in our medical microbiology class, but also we all passed the USLME Step 1 the first time.

This book can make studying microbiology very enjoyable. The illustrations are really catchy and you will remember them for a very long time. The tables are very concise and give you the important points. No unnecessary data, just plain old facts. You should have it while in medical school and not just for the board exams.

This is a very well written, concise, and even fun book on clinical micro. The mnemonically oriented illustrations are a nice idea and add to the overall enjoyment of reading the book. Some of these are really pretty entertaining. I give the authors points for creativity for including them. Some people might find them a little flippant at times, but I enjoyed them, and remember, this is mainly intended as a review book, which might be especially useful for those taking their boards.

The book does a good job also of including the latest information on the newest antibiotics and treatments, although these things of course change rapidly. To just mention possibly the most important of these: since the book was published, there have been the first reports of a strain of staphylococcus aureus that is resistant to the powerful new antibiotic, linezolid, and also of strains of enterococci that are resistant. Unfortunately, the drug has only been in use for about a year. This one of the few drugs still effective against tough, resistant, gram-positive bacteria.

To keep matters in perspective, however, the report from the UK said it was the only patient known out of 3000-4000 who have been given the drug. Since then a number of other cases of resistance have been reported here in the US also. No doubt there will be others but we're still talking about a very low incidence rate. However, it's a reminder that we can't rest on our laurels and the evolved resistance problem is going to be an ongoing issue.

But getting back to the book, this is a highly readable, informative, and even entertaining book on an important clinical subject. It's worth noting also that the credits page lists dozens of MD's who reviewed the different chapters, presumably for accuracy and completeness, so I would have confidence that the book has the best information possible as of the time it was published. All in all a good book which should be a useful resource for anyone needing to learn or bone up quickly about this important area, especially for anyone studying for their boards.