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.