Introduction to Modern Virology

Nice introductory reading in virology. But rather soon it turns into somewhat fluent overview of known facts. It's clear, that viruses difficult to be studied and described in such a strictly systematic manner as cellular forms of life e.g. Procaryota/Eukaryota.

First part of the book is kind of compendium of general facts about distinct viruses and their families, which lead to some less or more general conclusions. Next, comes the part where are described some selected species of importance to human being, animals and plants (primarily as pathogenic agents ofc). There, in my mind, one would expect more details on the physiology of those. But this is not the case. Probably, this would blow book volume drastically... So this is why it's called introduction, after all.

Unlike some other books of this ilk, this one doesn't contain such basics like f.ex. extensive DNA structure description, biosynthesis and host biology info. So, some prerequisites in biology required. As viruses still remain a moving target in numerous aspects, this book unavoidably misses things. Not pretending to be comprehensive, it is just a trampoline. Further details have to be mined from articles (virology is not exception here, but it's affected even more than other branches of science about life). In general, what authors aim at, they definitely reach, in my opinion.

All in all, really decent reading, and worth time if you find yourself interested in the topic, have some background already, but you're not a virologist yet :)
(BTW, funny British writing makes it only better :)

PS: don't even try to dig out something COVID-19 there.