This is a great book for students...because it's not heavy! Seriously, the chapters are short and concise,heavenly stuff when you're cramming the night before exams.The writing is clear and focused...it doesn't meander off into extreme details. The illustrations are self explanatory...and the pictures are graphic and gross...like they should be in a infectious disease textbook. Too bad there aren't more of them!

This book covers every medical microbiology topic that is needed for class exams or the USLME. The book is intensely filled with very elaborated information that any medical student needs to pass his or her exams. My study group and I also used the following for class exams and the USLME and found it extremely helpful. I also purchased this book on amazon which is the following:
Microbiology Study Guide: Key Review Questions and Answers by Patrick Leonardi (ISBN: 0971999635)
The questions in this study guide were on target with my class exams and was an excellent reference for the USLME. Buy both books. Most definitely!!

The first thing to understand about this book is that it is a textbook and a difficult one. The difficulty for the beginning student or general reader is not a fault of the authors. Rather it is because medical microbiology itself is a daunting subject full of organisms that can only be seen fuzzily with an electron microscope, if at all, organisms involved in processes and behaviors that are foreign to our everyday experience. Add the fact that most of the material covered here is not part of a non-specialist curriculum either in high school or college, and effectively speaking the untrained reader is starting from scratch.

Well, why do that? First of all, because the material itself--how viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other infectious organisms enter the body, replicate, and cause disease--is fascinating and of immediate relevance to our lives. Second because (to my knowledge) there is little or nothing else available to the general reader that goes beyond a sketchy introduction to the subject. One is forced to read a text book. Fortunately this is a good one and it is thorough.

The text covers the range of infectious disease from viruses to tapeworms. The amount of technical information presented is daunting, and the sheer expanse of terminology a challenge (why is there no glossary?). The text is lavishly illustrated with photos and electron micrographs of the pathogens, as well as numerous schematic drawings showing how microorganisms cause disease, how they replicate, their chemical structure, their morphology, etc.

The instructional schematic drawings I found less valuable than the electron micrographs, but I suspect for the student of microbiology it might be the other way around.

What you'll get out of this handsome book depends on how much time and energy you are able to devote to it. I started reading this in the hope that I would, perhaps by osmosis, pick up some feel for life at the micron level, and I did. Obviously if I had been able to study the text with the help of an instructor, I would have learned a lot more.

This is the only complete life tale of Earl Carroll in print. The book is a great collection of personal experiences with Mr. Carroll and second hand acounts of his life. Many of the big names in entertainment from the early 20th century crossed paths with Earl and are discussed in the text.

The book does a great job covering his life from a geeky stage hand to one of the countries most important production showman. A great read.

I agree with the previous reviewer that this book has the look...but not the feel, particularly for jazz's most recent half-century. What is so difficult to understand? What happened with--not to--jazz in recent decades is merely that most of its genuine creative spirits believed that it should reflect its era of creation. Not to run and hide from it, or adhere to an orthodox, rear-view mirror definition. Ironically Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and other celebrated early greats are celebrated for breaking/remaking the pop culture paradigms of their day. Miles Davis does the same thing in a later era and he gets accused by a vocal minority--given much word-time in this book--of something akin to treason.

If in recent decades a particular "jazz" musician heard a connection with an avant-garde sensibility, then the better visionaries (Ornette, Coltrane) effectively bridged that gap. If one sensed a connection with other countries (Brazil, Nigeria, Japan, etc.), then some intuitive artists made THAT work (Stan Getz, Toshiko Akiyoshi, etc.). And if one had an affinity for the more creative efforts in contemporary popular culture, then you got a best-of-many-worlds hybrid, at least from such forward-thinkers as Davis, Cassandra Wilson, Monday Michiru (who is virtually unknown in the land that created jazz--FYI Toshiko is her mom), and others. Concurrently, some musicians seemed to react against this no-holds-barred eclecticism and pick up from points in the now-distant past. That's okay, too...but it's not the only "right" way to bridge jazz's past with it's present and future.

Of course, a majority of tag-along musicians dumbed-down all of these valid scenarios, with results that ranged from commercial-lite to cacaphonic-heavy. Yet particularly the former was true in jazz's early decades, too. Bottom line: the best recent efforts are no less aesthetically timeless than the indisputable great moments of jazz's first half-century.

Sorry to rant, but I think my opinions are far from unique among contemporary jazz fans...in fact, there was already a long line forming before I got in it. I would lukewarmly recommend this book to newcomers, because despite its faults it does attempt to deal with this unique art form in a serious manner, and with a stylish, photo-rich layout. I would just add that a lot of us fans would like to have seen our vision of contemporary jazz better-reflected, rather than not-too-subtly dissed. For one, the Grammy awards been there, done that.

I enjoyed listening to this extensive overview of the history of jazz. The reader, LaVar Burton, was excellent in his reading of the text. The quotations and remarks from various musicians through the years were refreshing and interesting. My only wish, as this was an audiobook, was more musical examples of the artists. For example, after explaining a style of a musician, having a short interlude illustrating it would be nice. Overall, I enjoyed listening to it and found it very interesting and informative.

As a jazz fan and a professional music retailer, I can recommend this book as a wonderful place to begin one's discovery of jazz or gain more knowledge of the cultural legacy of the music. In conjunction with the excellent video series and a box of cds by the titans written about by Ward, ie. Armstrong, Ellington, Davis, Parker, Holiday, etc., one can have a wonderful adventure either discovering the music for the first time or revisiting and expanding old passions. Those who quibble with its incompleteness run the risk of branding themselves cynics after the fashion of Wilde's definition: "A man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

Heck, I'll just paste the point as described by this very site:
"He advocates a constitutional amendment that would allow voluntary prayer if students initiate it and school districts accommodate it. "

This is already legal...so again, what's the point?

Here is a book which is interesting and unique, more for the circumstances of who the author is, and how he came to write it, than for the substance and quality of its argumentation. From the first pages, the book sounds a clarion call to our nation to wake up and realize that publicly-imposed school prayer is the panacea which will begin the healing of U.S. society, a society which is knee-deep in sin, crime, violence and depravity. Curiously we find out in the early pages that the author, William Murray (no, not the comedian from Groundhog Day and Saturday Night Live), is one of the sons of the late atheist pioneer Madalyn Murray O'Hair (believed murdered, her body never recovered). And wait, it gets better! Our author, was the very student around whom the 1963 Supreme Court decision banning state-sponsored and mandated school prayer, revolved! Since those days, Mr. Murray has become a born-again christian, and has devoted much of his time and energy to negating the atheist legacy of his deceased mother in every possible nook, cranny and arena...not the least of which is the court decision just mentioned. The book is an interesting read, mainly for the history of this rather eccentric family and the first-hand description of Mr Murray's odyssey from refusal to pray in class (at the directive of his mother), being called to the principal's office, the arrival of curious reporters, the ridicule on the playground, the commencement of legal action in the local courts, the appeals to higher courts, appeals to still higher courts and finally the culmination in the United States Supreme Court. After this interesting history, the book begins to fall apart at the seams. In failing to express to the reader the FACT that prayer in public schools is perfectly legal and always has been, but is a matter of doing so individually and silently, the author is being obviously disingenuous with us and plays a game of make-believe throughout much of his argumentation. Amazingly, he fails to draw a distinction between this private, silent prayer which is legal, and the REAL focus of his agenda...the imposition of christian prayer during classroom hours, on unwilling students of all demographics, all religions, not to mention atheists, agnostics, humanists, and people of all other philosophies and ideologies. The author throws up a flimsy smokescreen by indignantly attacking the "smug scientism" of the schools, the "secular agenda" of the courts, and "moral relativism" of society, and citing all of them as the evils causing the decay of the world. This sloganeering doesn't help Mr. Murray to obfuscate his patently false contention that school prayer is illegal! Only in the final pages of the book does he even give lip service to the fallacy of this claim. In a desultory and convoluted manner, Mr. Murray demonstrates a good deal of book-learning as he reviews relevant court decisions, invokes the founding fathers, and enlists De' Touqueville, Locke, and Paine, as well as many voices from today's cultural elite as unwitting accomplices in his strange attempt to marry church and state. Unfortunately for him, in almost every instance the examples work to his own detriment, because as we all know, our founding fathers wrote the U.S. Constitution for all of us, not just people of one faith, and certainly not to impose the prayers of one religion on others by virtue of a majority vote. And the same proves true for nearly every other source cited, each undermining the specious attempts of the author - the exception being quotes from several well-known individuals of the christian right wing who defend their well-know turf. Throughout the book, Mr. Murray seems oblivious to the commonly-accepted notion that the utmost failing in our society is in the HOMES of the problem children, by the PARENTS of the problem children. If Mr. Murray or any other citizen wishes to engage in religious prayer or ritual in their own homes for 10 hours per day, they are free to do so. Also omitted in the author's thinking is the obvious role of the CHURCH as a venue for one's religious observances - another fine place for prayer, prayer, prayer to one's heart's content. But no, prayer in the home, prayer in the church, these just won't do for Mr. Murray! Because he believes that HIS religious cohorts constitute a majority vote over people of all other backgrounds, he believes he must save the world by imposing HIS prayers on everyone else. How he thinks that a child whose HOME and CHURCH have failed in providing her with a foundation in religion, morals and ethics, would suddenly see the light and blossom forth in the bullying classroom atmosphere he outlines in this book, is unclear to me. Jesus Christ himself, in the sermon on the mount stated in no uncertain terms that the ritual of prayer is a most intimate experience and should be done in private. Perhaps the best thing Mr. Murray and his cohorts could learn is this vital lesson from the New Testament.