I was encouraged to purchase for a graduate level course I am taking in bacterial pathogenesis. I think that is an excellent supplement to the course, especially considering that it is quite inexpensive when compared to all of the other graduate text books I have had to purchase. This is definitely my favorite text book for this semester because while it gives a lot of technical information, it is written in such a way as to make it relevant, clear, and generally easy to read. The authors really seemed to try and make this book as interesting as possible, which I really appreciate. It is so much easier to learn from a book that you enjoy reading, which is something that most text book writers don't seem to realize.
This book covers quite a variety of topics related to the molecular and general mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis as well as host responses. It is probably not the best book for those who are solely interested in clinical bacteriology as it does not go into much detail on this subject. The figures and tables generally seem to be concise, easy to understand, and clearly captioned. Every chapter also includes boxes that contain interesting real world stories related to the chapter topic. Some of these stories are about more historic events and some are about fairly recent developments in the field.
If you are taking a course that recommends this book I would encourage you to get it. There are also earlier editions of this book out there, but I have not looked at any of them so I really can't say anything as to how they compare to the third edition.