Book excerpt: The 14th International Conference on Laser Spectroscopy brought together spectroscopists from all over the world working in the very diverse and still growing field of laser spectroscopy. Spanning the area from fundamental issues (such as experiments testing the foundations of quantum mechanics), to atomic and molecular spectroscopy, precision spectroscopy and matter wave optics to Bose-Einstein condensation, covering quantum optics and the new field of quantum computation and quantum information, up to nonlinear optics and ultrashort pulse spectroscopy, and medical applications of laser spectroscopy, the conference addressed a large number of modern scientific issues at the highest level.