Environmental Microbiology

by Raina M. Maier, Ian L. Pepper, and Charles P Gerba.

Academic Press, Second Edition, 2008 (First Edition, 2000). 598 pages.

ISBN-13: 9780123705198

Pub. Date: October 2008

Online Price: $79.95

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Environmental Microbiology; From Genomes to Biochemistry

by Eugene L. Madsen.

Blackwell Publishing, 2008 479 pages.

ISBN-13: 9781405136471

Pub. Date: April 2008

Online Price: $104.95

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SCIENCE AND THE MICROBIAL SEA OF LIFE:

TWO RECENT TEXTBOOKS ON ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY

Reviewed by Glenn Shipley, PhD, MT(ASCP)

As interest in ecology and environmental problems has grown in the past quarter century, microbiology has played an increasingly important role in providing us with information about the microbial foundations of the living world around us – not only the small number of pathogenic species, but also the much larger group of non-pathogens resident in air, water, earth and ourselves.  Developments in environmental microbiology have reached the point where an enormous amount of current knowledge of the subject can now be assembled into a textbook suitable for a one semester, upper-division undergraduate or graduate level university course.

Two recent offerings of such textbooks appeared in 2008 with the same title: Environmental Microbiology. One is the second edition of a book originally published by Academic Press in 2000. The other is a new offering by Blackwell Publishing.  But while these two excellent works cover the same ground and both articulate the key importance of new techniques in microscopy for this rapidly growing field of study, they are different in very significant ways - which we hope to make evident in this comparative review.

Environmental Microbiology, by Raina M. Maier, Ian L. Pepper, and Charles P Gerba. Academic Press, SecondEdition, 2008 (First Edition, 2000). 598 pages. ISBN-13: 9780123705198; Pub. Date: October 2008; Online Price: $79.95

The Maier-Pepper-Gerba (MPG) book is written by a panel of scholars and researchers recruited by the three primary authors, whereas Eugene Madsen is the sole author of the new Blackwell book appearing under his name. While the MPG book retained nine of the thirteen original authors of the first edition, in its second edition five new names appear.  Several entirely new chapters have been added, and virtually all the other chapters have been greatly expanded or revised.  The book is complemented by a second volume of practical laboratory exercises by several of the same authors, meant as an accompaniment to the textbook for anyone wanting to use them both for a college lecture course with a laboratory component.

It is evident that the authors of the second edition of the MPG text have adopted a rigorously “bottom-up” empirical approach, assembling all that is currently known on the subject, and basing it closely on published work and experimentally verified evidence.  The book is assembled under eight topical sections:

1. basic microbiological concepts (Chapters 1, 2 & 3);

2. microbiological environments – earth (soil), air, and water (Chapters 4, 5 & 6);

3. methodologies for detecting, enumerating, and identifying microbes (Chapters  8 through 13);

4. microbial interactions with each other and their environment (Chapters 14 through 19);

5. pollution and its remediation (Chapters 20 & 21);

6. water and foodborne pathogens (Chapters 22 & 23);

7. wastewater treatment and disinfection (Chapters 24, 25 & 26);

8. urban microbiology (Chapters 27, 28 & 29).

Nearly every page of the text is populated with tables, information boxes, colorful diagrams, figures and equations, and with the end of chapter references there is enough material to keep a diligent student burning the midnight oil for weeks and months.  A good example is pictured below.

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Fig 13-19  From Environmental Microbiology 2^nd Edition (Maier-Pepper-Gerba), p 267.