Edited by K. Esser

2014

The Mycota
A Comprehensive Treatise
on Fungi as Experimental Systems
for Basic and Applied Research

XII Volume

Books are old-fashioned. Books are never up-to-date, expensive and impractical. And books don’t pay off for those who spend time and effort writing them. All these thoughts are among the first reactions evoked when contacting friends and colleagues to let them know you have accepted an offer to edit a book. Many of these reactions are – to say the worst – entirely true. So why take the effort? A very personal reason is that it was a book (and in fact a very old-fashioned, entirely not up-to-date book) that started my fascination for fungal pathogens when I was a young medical student starting to work on his M.D. thesis in 1997. This book was the 2nd edition of Frank Odds’ outstanding compilation Candida and Candidosis published in 1988. For me it turned out to be a treasure of information and knowledge that guided me in exploring contemporary literature and helped in understanding a larger context.