Reviewers Comments

"I had used the "Basic Virology" text for my General Virology course in the past and was very pleased with it. I teach the course in alternating years and, unfortunately, I have switched back an forth between [competing text] and "Basic Virology" each time I taught the course. When I switched back to [competing text] this past Fall semester after using "Basic Virology", I realized that it was a mistake to switch. The content of "Basic Virology" much more in depth and I could count on the students to get the information they needed from reading the text and that enables me to spend more time in the classroom discussing key concepts, reviewing the literature and discussing research strategies. I find that "Basic Virology" also provides a nice balance of clinical information, basic biology and molecular biology. Features of "Basic Virology" that I find most attractive are the problems at the end of each Part and an entire section devoted to "Working with Viruses".

I like to use the questions at the end of each chapter as starting points for classroom discussion and then the problems at the end of each Part tie all the concepts together. The problems at the end of each Part are well designed to address critical thinking skills and I use them as a guide to formulating my own questions as well as encouraging students to prepare questions themselves. My students tend to be very focused on how things are done in the laboratory and the "Working with Viruses" Part is an excellent guide to the techniques of the working virologist and the students really enjoy that."<- Dave Westenberg, University of Missouri - Rolla