About 50 publications out of more than 500 have been selected from the work of Michael Rossmann covering the years from 1958 to 2012. These include his early work with Max Perutz on hemoglobin and the first protein structures to his current work on the structures of small icosahedral and large polymorphic viruses. These papers describe not only some of the first protein and virus structures, but also the crystallographic and electron microscopic technologies. Furthermore, the author's interests include evolution and protein folding.

The selected papers are a personal history of structural biology and especially of structural virology. The papers describe many of the basic techniques of structural biology such as isomorphous replacement, anomalous dispersion of X-rays, the molecular replacement method, X-ray diffraction data processing and combining crystallographic data with electron microscopic images.

The book covers much of the historical development of the modern flourishing field of structural biology in terms of the authors' own contributions.