Book excerpt: Now in striking full color, this Seventh Edition of Koneman’s gold standard text presents all the principles and practices readers need for a solid grounding in all aspects of clinical microbiology—bacteriology, mycology, parasitology, and virology. Comprehensive, easy-to-understand, and filled with high quality images, the book covers cell and structure identification in more depth than any other book available. This fully updated Seventh Edition is enhanced by new pedagogy, new clinical scenarios, new photos and illustrations, and all-new instructor and student resources.