Customer Reviews

Manual of Environmental Microbiology

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One word describes this book - wow! This book is a great source of information for everybody that is seriously interested in environmental microbiology. The wealth of information given in this book is divided into 98 "short stories", most of them on average 10 pages long, each written by a different scientist. Even though the book is presented in a very scientific manner, it reads surprisingly easy, although the reader should have some knowledge of microbiology and biochemistry. This is not a textbook! Those of you who are looking for a pretty picture book should look elsewhere. There are no fancy appendices or glossaries, no CD-ROM, just an index. Pictures and graphs are held to a minimum and are used for the more complex concepts only. At the end of each chapter, a bibliography invites to further exploration of the particular topic. Here are the main sections of the book: 1. Introduction to environmental microbiology, 2. General methodology, 3. Water microbiology in public health, 4. Aquatic environments, 5. Soil, Rhizosphere, and Phyllosphere, 6. Subsurface and landfills, 7. Aerobiology, 8. Biotransformation and biodegradation. In conclusion, this book has quality and substance, just as you would expect from a book published by the ASM.