Customer Reviews

Microbiology (Lippincott's Illustrated Reviews Series)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I used this book through 2 years of medical school and found it to be quite helpful. It doesn't go into a bunch on needless details, but give you what you need to know. The book is well-organized and has some excellent color photos as well. There is a quick reference section in the back which is helpful for boards when you need a quick review. It gives you the bug, the tests you would do, the path, and the drug to treat.

After progressing in reading, the reader will get used to the generosity of the authors in their constant, yet might be odd, attempts to illustrate the subject matter, specially, the extended review summaries at the end of the book. The book strength lies in standardizing the review methods of classification of microorganism, of drug stacks used in treatment, and of microscopic and culture morphology.

Despite the reasonable flow of thoughts in the paragraphs of each subject, the book lacks highlighting of names of diseases, organisms, and methods that are left hidden in the maze of words. Thus, the student reader has to struggle with underlining and highlighting the dense text. For example, a long paragraph on selective, bacterial culture media contains five media names typed as plain text. That would require thorough re-reading, while reviewing, in order to memorize the five media. Thus, the authors abandoned the very premise of the book, which is "to review", and left the reader with the burden of searching while reviewing.

The book lacks of adequate footnotes or paragraph notes in visible locations. As such, the book paragraphs are plain, dense, and burdensome. Though there are plenty of boxed highlighted concepts, and even funny cartoons, it appears that the authors dismissed the busy and somber mood of busy lifestyle of students and rather tended to the relaxed style of casual readers.

Although most of the graphic illustrations are useful and neat, there is a sense of naivety in making trivial illustrations that serve no higher cause than the obvious. For example, on modes of virus transmission, a figure shows placental, birth canal, and postpartum images of contact between the agent and fetus/baby. Nothing is gained from such simplistic graphing of the plain and obvious course of action. In displaying the microscopic slides and culture photos, the book wasted more space on the entitling of the medical illustrations than on making the slides and cultures large enough to be legible.

The book ventures into an odd and redundant way of describing bacterial classification using colored pie chart. The frequently repeated colored pie serves very little purpose compared to the space it occupied. Neither the portions of the pie correspond to any numeric value of the bacterial classes they represent, nor do the colors of the pie wedges serve any purpose other than decorating the book page. The same odd style of representation applies to the use of one-column tables that use multiple rows to compare two different types of organisms.

Well organized and easy to read. Some color pictures in the back. Breaks down essentially what you need to know for medical boards. virulence factors, drugs used to treat, etc.

Great review book, color codes are great, makes microbiology managable, use for course as well as board review.

This book rocks. Seriously. The second edition is a serious improvement over the first. The integration with with other Lippincott reviews (Biochem & Pharm) puts this book on the must-have short-list for Step 1.

Watch out Med Micro Made Ridiculously Simple, this could and should be the new number one USMLE micro book.

This is a book that I should have read more. Great illustrations, and better descriptions. Great review of Infectious diseases and the therapy required to deal with them.

Notice the word 'Reviews' in the title. This series of books from Lippincott are just that. A review of the subject, in this case Microbiology. This book doesn't spend a lot of time introducing you to the basic concepts of microbiology. The third sentence in the book explains it pretty well: 'In this volume, we primarily consider the role of microorganisms - bacteris, fungi, protozoa, helminths, and viruses - in the initiation and spread of human diseases.'

I find that this book is a bit advanced for undergraduate study. It is not a general text on microbiology. As the sentence quoted above clearly says, it is oriented to diseases. But for a graduate student who needs either a rapid review of past microbiology courses, or who now needs to get up to speed in this area it is an excellent choice. In its 450 or so pages it completely covers the subject and in a fairly light, fast, well illustrated, and well summarized manner. It even has time, once in a while to insert a microbiology oriented cartoon.

I bought Lippicott's microbiology review, after having WONDERFUL success with their biochemistry review text. The one fundamental difference in the text books is that there is no summary at the end of each chapter. The summaries are awesome, and without them, this review series is not nearly as helpful.

This book is a great review for microbiology on the MCAT. Clear explanations, with pictures and figures, as well as concise chapter summaries make this a helpful book for MCAT prep. I also used the Lippincott Biochem review and thought it was also very useful as a MCAT study aid.

I absolutely love the Lippincott illustrated reviews series and this book continues that great tradition. The book is so well written with the perfect amount of detail. When you read these books you don't feel like your studying. The pictures are amazing and really help solidify the concepts. I highly recommend this book for any health professional.