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A not so small book for handy use
BOOK
REVIEWS
the former term is certainly without meaning. Medical Microbiology is comprehensive, which suits traditionalstyle courses in medicine and science, although it has become increasingly recognized that students tend to suffer from information overload. To expect a student to read a book of over 700 pages in one of many disciplines may be overambitious. This seems to have been recognized by the publishers of a rival text1, which
produces a synopsis volume to accompany the main text. Moreover, the slant in Medical Microbiology is towards systematic microbiology, which is less relevant to the trainee physician. The same information is better approached from the perspective of disease presentation. Perhaps the best compromise is for the student to have a ‘core’ textbook, which teaches microbiology by clinical presentation, and a supplementary text to gain more detail on the
individual microorganisms. This book is ideally suited to the latter and provides very good value for money.
A not so small book for handy use
After a short introductory section devoted to contributions on microbial communities and prokaryotic diversity, and a much longer section on general methodologies, the nearly 100 contributions in the remainder of the book are organized according to habitat, with two sections on water (disease transmission and aquatic ecology), two on terrestrial habitats (soil and plants), one on subsurface/landfills and one on aerobiology; in contrast, the last section is organized according to function, namely biodegradation and biotransformation. It could be argued that a section on foodborne microorganisms should have been included for completeness, and it is a little surprising, given the current interest in hyperthermophiles, that the special problems of their isolation and culture are not covered, particularly as high-pressure habitats and barophiles are included. The individual contributions mostly review methods and experimental approaches, their advantages and shortcomings, and their applications. There is generally a good balance between comprehensive coverage of methods and a critical comparative approach. The book is not a laboratory manual, but some contributions do contain recipes for media and, in a few instances, the names and addresses of equipment suppliers (although the latter will be of limited use to European readers, as they are confined to American companies). The contributor list is impressive and the writing is generally concise and authoritative. The style is ‘information-dense’: each contribution is just a few pages long, or-
ganized in a two-column format in a relatively small font, with only a few diagrams and figures, which are nearly all in black and white, to lighten the text. The referencing is commendably full, with complete titles, and is reasonably up to date (1995), considering the time it takes to assemble a large multiauthor book. The price of the book will preclude many personal purchasers from committing their purses, but it will undoubtedly become a standard text for laboratories working in the diverse fields that constitute environmental microbiology. It will be particularly useful for researchers embarking on a new area of study and wanting an authoritative introduction to the methodology as a starting point for more-detailed and technical treatises. As such, it is a most welcome addition to the literature, one that my own doctoral students have already ‘borrowed’ from my desk!
Manual of Environmental Microbiology edited by C.J. Hurst et al. ASM Press, 1997. £59.50 hbk (xvii + 894 pages) ISBN 1 55581 087 X
W
e live in a world with a great diversity of habitats, but as humans we colonize relatively little of that diversity, especially in comparison with microorganisms, whose genetic plasticity, metabolic diversity and physiological adaptability enable them to carve out a successful existence from the cosy nutrient richness of human guts and foodstuffs to the starvation conditions at extremes of pH and temperature. This plethora of variability has given microbiologists a wealth of populations, communities, consortia, habitats and niches to investigate beneath the umbrella of ‘environmental microbiology’. If you want to clarify the proper usage of this term and discover more about the experimental approaches that underpin the study of microbial ecology, then the Manual of Environmental Microbiology should be on your desk. Not surprisingly, such a large field requires a comparably large volume to cover the range of topics, and Christon Hurst, his four editors and his team of contributors have generally done a good job of surveying the topic to produce a weighty tome, defying my dictionary definition of a ‘manual’ as being a ‘small book for handy use’!
TRENDS
IN
MICROBIOLOGY
167
Steve H. Myint Professor of Clinical Microbiology, University of Leicester Medical School, UK LE1 9HN Reference 1 Baron, S., ed. (1997) Medical Microbiology, UTMB
Nick Russell Microbiology Laboratories, Dept of Biological Sciences, Wye College University of London, Ashford, Kent, UK TN25 5AH
Students Subscribe to TIM at a 50% discount using the bound-in card
VOL. 6 NO. 4 APRIL 1998
REVIEWS
the former term is certainly without meaning. Medical Microbiology is comprehensive, which suits traditionalstyle courses in medicine and science, although it has become increasingly recognized that students tend to suffer from information overload. To expect a student to read a book of over 700 pages in one of many disciplines may be overambitious. This seems to have been recognized by the publishers of a rival text1, which
produces a synopsis volume to accompany the main text. Moreover, the slant in Medical Microbiology is towards systematic microbiology, which is less relevant to the trainee physician. The same information is better approached from the perspective of disease presentation. Perhaps the best compromise is for the student to have a ‘core’ textbook, which teaches microbiology by clinical presentation, and a supplementary text to gain more detail on the
individual microorganisms. This book is ideally suited to the latter and provides very good value for money.
A not so small book for handy use
After a short introductory section devoted to contributions on microbial communities and prokaryotic diversity, and a much longer section on general methodologies, the nearly 100 contributions in the remainder of the book are organized according to habitat, with two sections on water (disease transmission and aquatic ecology), two on terrestrial habitats (soil and plants), one on subsurface/landfills and one on aerobiology; in contrast, the last section is organized according to function, namely biodegradation and biotransformation. It could be argued that a section on foodborne microorganisms should have been included for completeness, and it is a little surprising, given the current interest in hyperthermophiles, that the special problems of their isolation and culture are not covered, particularly as high-pressure habitats and barophiles are included. The individual contributions mostly review methods and experimental approaches, their advantages and shortcomings, and their applications. There is generally a good balance between comprehensive coverage of methods and a critical comparative approach. The book is not a laboratory manual, but some contributions do contain recipes for media and, in a few instances, the names and addresses of equipment suppliers (although the latter will be of limited use to European readers, as they are confined to American companies). The contributor list is impressive and the writing is generally concise and authoritative. The style is ‘information-dense’: each contribution is just a few pages long, or-
ganized in a two-column format in a relatively small font, with only a few diagrams and figures, which are nearly all in black and white, to lighten the text. The referencing is commendably full, with complete titles, and is reasonably up to date (1995), considering the time it takes to assemble a large multiauthor book. The price of the book will preclude many personal purchasers from committing their purses, but it will undoubtedly become a standard text for laboratories working in the diverse fields that constitute environmental microbiology. It will be particularly useful for researchers embarking on a new area of study and wanting an authoritative introduction to the methodology as a starting point for more-detailed and technical treatises. As such, it is a most welcome addition to the literature, one that my own doctoral students have already ‘borrowed’ from my desk!
Manual of Environmental Microbiology edited by C.J. Hurst et al. ASM Press, 1997. £59.50 hbk (xvii + 894 pages) ISBN 1 55581 087 X
W
e live in a world with a great diversity of habitats, but as humans we colonize relatively little of that diversity, especially in comparison with microorganisms, whose genetic plasticity, metabolic diversity and physiological adaptability enable them to carve out a successful existence from the cosy nutrient richness of human guts and foodstuffs to the starvation conditions at extremes of pH and temperature. This plethora of variability has given microbiologists a wealth of populations, communities, consortia, habitats and niches to investigate beneath the umbrella of ‘environmental microbiology’. If you want to clarify the proper usage of this term and discover more about the experimental approaches that underpin the study of microbial ecology, then the Manual of Environmental Microbiology should be on your desk. Not surprisingly, such a large field requires a comparably large volume to cover the range of topics, and Christon Hurst, his four editors and his team of contributors have generally done a good job of surveying the topic to produce a weighty tome, defying my dictionary definition of a ‘manual’ as being a ‘small book for handy use’!
TRENDS
IN
MICROBIOLOGY
167
Steve H. Myint Professor of Clinical Microbiology, University of Leicester Medical School, UK LE1 9HN Reference 1 Baron, S., ed. (1997) Medical Microbiology, UTMB
Nick Russell Microbiology Laboratories, Dept of Biological Sciences, Wye College University of London, Ashford, Kent, UK TN25 5AH
Students Subscribe to TIM at a 50% discount using the bound-in card
VOL. 6 NO. 4 APRIL 1998