Fluorescence Microscopy and Fluorescence Probes, edited by Jan Slavik, 1996. Plenum Press, New York and London. 306 pages. (hardback, $95)

This volume is a compilation of abstracts of papers presented at the Fluorescence Microscopy and Fluorescence Probes Conference held in Prague in June 1995. This conference was one of the first tangible results of the end of the Cold War in the field of microscopy. As such, it attracted a great many of those who constitute the vanguard of progress in the field of fluorescence microscopy, on both sides of the old East-West divide. About one-third of the 127 contributors were from the West.