Microcosmos: Discovering The World Through Microscopic Images From 20 X to Over 22 Million X Magnification

Really great images that leave you in awe, albeit images one could easily find on the internet. There is a description for each image, which is not always found on the images you get online, which is why I bought it. I will say though, not every image is sharp, and some even repeat on different pages at different angles, but that's because something is just difficult to image and there are further explanations in following pages.

if you enjoy the world of the very, very small, then this book is for you. divided into chapters covering subjects as diverse as microorganisms, botanics, zoology, and the human body, and featuring magnifications from as low as 38x to as high as 12,000x and above, these photographs are stunning. beautifully colored to highlight the smallest details, each page is a journey of discovery. it is hard to believe, for example, that single celled animals can have hairlike structures, and even harder to believe that you can view these incredibly tiny features. While this book is geared toward adult audiences, children too will find many of the images captivating, especially those like the head of a mosquito, or butterfly scales.A steal at twice the price, you can't afford to pass this one up at a price of under $10.

Reading through this book was a frustrating experience. After every page I wanted more... but not in a complementary way. I was left feeling like with just a bit more effort, this could have been really great book.The photos, are of course, the main event here. They're fascinating to look at, and some are quite beautiful. But the accompanying text feels like it goes out of its way to be unhelpful. It alternates between dropping unexplained, non sequitur factoids ("In the extreme corners of the stem, the best position mechanically, small collenchyma cells are visible"), and a rote listing of textbook labels ("The xylem and phloem are surrounded by a ring of parenchyma cells.").I suppose I was hoping for an pithy synopsis of each image, from an expert--a botanist, biologist, or a materials scientist--but one gets the impression that an intern was hired to copy random paragraphs from wikipedia for the accompanying text.So the words are forgettable, but who cares, the pictures are pretty, right? Except the decision was made to limit every image to half the page, leaving the other half for explanatory text (which is never more than one paragraph) and thus mostly empty! Why would you do that?!There is always a large magnification label (e.g., 1000X) but no real sense of scale is ever given. This could have been easily done with an inset image of the subject zoomed out, or with an introductory chapter giving familiar examples for scale comparison, or with measurement overlays, or any number of ways. People are really bad at conceptualizing exponential scale; just listing the magnification power isn't really sufficient.So, this makes a great coffee table book, but if you're looking for more depth, you'll need to find it elsewhere.

Wonderful photographs of the tiny, sometimes even invisible-to-the-naked-eye creatures and objects that share our world. Even though this book was published more than a decade ago, I don't think I've seen anything like it. Includes micro-photos of plants, animals, and mineral specimens, beautifully produced. Inspiring!

I wish there was a bit more scanning electron microscope images along with some technical details, but overall this is a solid book.The vast range of different images and the creativity makes it 4 stars. It is really neat and a few images really left me feeling humbled. Especially the picture of the Pentium IV chip. Wow.

As a rookie of scanning electron microscope (SEM) imagery I found this book very useful and fascinating. The coloring of the images and its resolution are amazing. The quality of the book is just great. I find it was a good deal overall.

There are not many books with microscopic images on Amazon: bearing that in mind this book would deserve an extra star, it is divided on sections each with a subject, minerals, plants, human body etc.. The frustating thing is the lack of care on the books design, each page is half blank with few big O letters on what the pic is about: more text would be welcome as pointed out by another reviewer...either this or to blow up the picture to frame the whole page, the description line would be fine on the margin.On the end the book could be half on size that would make no difference.Nice pictures though.

Affordable price, excellent photos, good color printing. Regrettably, the type of binding -- glue -- is unlikely to last many years before it dries out and starts falling apart. I guess that is the downside of the afforable price!

Really good book. I bought this for a male friend and he found it to be extremely interesting - . .

Good book

was for gift for my grandson 9 y.o. in addition to microscope. he love it.

I have only just received this book and haven't had a chance to read, but the images are quite amazing and I have to admit that is why I bought the book. Shipping was very fast and book was on great condition very pleased overall.

Todas las microfotos del libro me han parecido interesantes, algunas realmente impresionan, y la calidad de la impresión es perfecta.