Customer Reviews

Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book is big and heavy and is filled with useful information for the world of microorganisms. All microbiology majors must have this book in their libraries. This book helps you identify, compare, and understand microorganisms better. Every organism is descibed in detail: gram-stain reactions, fermentation reaction, morphology, etc.

This "Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology" has an admirable practical approach. It depicted the characteristics of bacterial groups in a straightforward manner. Using a wide focus, it featured vivid illustrations, which will enable you to reason like a professional. The manual provided a good number of easy-to-master materials.
However, I felt that this 9th Edition, which first appeared in 1994, is just too old. The authors should give us a more recent update. Also, the high retail price of this book ensured that many people would go for a better alternative. There are lots of them out there! The choice is yours.

This book got me through Microbiology lab--easy to understand, and thorough. Everything you could want to know about a bacterium or a species is detailed here for you! I'm not selling this one back! Get this if you don't want to be writing reports in the middle of the night, going "oh, shoot, I didn't look up this or that bit of information in my professor's copy!"

worth it's weight in gold!

I bought this book to supplement my text book and lab book in a Microbiology class. This book includes keys to help you determine characteristics of bacteria. It was particularly helpful when doing my unknown lab assignments. There may be tests that you need to run whose results aren't covered in your text book or lab manual. If you are a student who is serious about your grade, as I was, you will not want to rely on search engines to interpret results not covered in your instructor provided materials. I only wish I'd purchased this book sooner in the semester, when we did our first lab with many tests being run simultaneously, so that I wouldn't have spent all that time comparing results to other students and using search engines.

I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 because it was sort of hard to use, since it had more strains of bacteria and more tests than we had available to is in the lab. This required me to focus and think critically while using Bergey's manual, rather than just being able to flip to a page and quickly see what a positive or negative result was. I also wish it had photos, also.

With the help of Bergey's Manual, I earned A's on my unknown labs as well as in the class. I recommend this book to all students who want to make sure that they earn an A in Microbiology.