With more than 122 contributing authors, the third edition of the Handbook of Biological Confocal Microscopy is an authoritative source of information on all forms of 3-D light microscopy and on related techniques and instrumentation. It has more than 1000 pages, including 53 chapters, three appendices and numerous color illustrations. It details microscope parts, digital aspects of data acquisition, properties of fluorescent dyes, the techniques of 3-D specimen preparation, and the limitations and practical complexities of quantitative confocal fluorescence imaging. Chapters address laser sources and objective lenses for confocal microscopy, visualization systems for multidimensional confocal laser scanning microscopy images, the specimen illumination path and its effect on image quality and intermediate optics in Nipkow disk microscopes. James Pawley, ed.; Springer, New York, 2006; $129.