Bacteria in Biology, Biotechnology and Medicine, 6th ed. Paul Singleton. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2004, 570 pp., $80.00, paperback. ISBN 0-470-09027-8.

Paul Singleton is a prolific author of texts on bacteriology. The first edition of this book was published in 1981. I was interested to find, at Amazon.com, a recent review of the 1981 text that referred to it as “clear and accessible” and “a good supplement to biology courses in college or even advanced high school courses”, because I find those descriptives applicable to the current version as well. It is fair to say that to set a task of creating a readable text on such an extremely broad topic in <600 pages would be a major challenge. The author has accomplished his task by being broadly inclusive, without going into too much detail on every aspect. The style of text is highly readable, being tight but not terse. Some topics, including those that address molecular biology, are handled well, with moderate complexity, whereas others, such as antimicrobial susceptibility and resistance, are handled far too sparsely. In some places, the sparseness may lead to confusion. For example, in speaking about methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the comment is made that this organism “was once commonly sensitive to vancomycin, but reduced susceptibility to the antibiotic has been reported frequently”. It is quite incorrect to imply that vancomycin is not the drug of choice for infections with MRSA. In another example of excessive sparseness, in one 10-page section, Singleton addresses 42 different bacterial infections (anthrax to whooping cough). In my opinion, the book would have been enhanced if some of these overly brief sections had been left out. Of interest, some sections that, in my opinion, would have been more appropriate are left out or virtually ignored. There is no discussion on bacterial antigens, with the exception of a single sentence that refers to O and H antigens for serotyping Salmonella and O antigens for typing Escherichia coli. In addition, bacterial hemolysis and hemolysins, a subject of considerable significance with respect to bacterial identification and pathogenesis, received only one paragraph of attention. In summary, the book is a clearly written, broadly encompassing, but superficial text on the topic of bacteria. In my opinion, it would be most useful as a teacher’s guide while preparing introductory lectures for science students being introduced to microbiology. It would find a limited role in most laboratory libraries.

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