World of Microbiology and Immunology

The entries are in alphabetical order with many cross references. Though there are no bibliographies with the entries, there are 13 pages of book and journal-article citations and 10 pages of Web addresses in the "Sources Consulted" section. This is followed by an 18-page "Historical Chronology" of milestones in human scientific achievement, showing how ancient (circa 10,000 B.C.E.) ideas eventually led to germ theory and the burgeoning of microbiology and immunology through 2002. The extensive, detailed general index indicates the main entries' volume and page numbers in boldface type. Sometimes the same page information is repeated in regular type, an unnecessary redundancy. Using the index one can find that the Irish potato famine is mentioned in the entry on Fungal genetics along with other similarly embedded bits of information. One important, but missing, finding aid is an index to the biographies, as browsing biographies is often a way to interest students in a discipline.

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