Bioenergy research, development and industrialization are moving at a rapid pace. This includes work on microbial biofuels as they represent key facets of the renewable energy portfolios in many countries. Bioethanol (fuel alcohol produced by fermentation) is currently the leading global biofuel and is produced from starch and sugar substrates. The future, however, lies with more sustainable (and publically acceptable) biomass sources, including waste materials. This book is therefore timely and focuses on lignocellulose-to-bioethanol technologies, with particular emphasis on maize residues and 'energy crops' such as Miscanthus spp. and Panicum virgatum (switchgrass). Biomass supply, pre-treatment and analysis are well covered, but only two chapters specifically deal with microbiological issues: one covering lab protocols for cultivating anaerobic bacteria, and the other covering lab-scale methods for SSF (simultaneous saccharification and fermentation) for yeast and bacterial processes. Such biofuel fermentations, utilizing second-generation (non-food) substrates, are now moving from demonstration pilot-plants to full-scale industrial plants (certainly in the US) and there is much interest in optimizing microbiology and fermentation technology aspects of these bioprocesses. This is a most useful text, or rather lab handbook, that covers many analytical methods and applications for biomass-to-biofuel technologies. Therefore, researchers investigating renewable energy challenges would be biofools not to purchase this book.