Authored by electron microscopists and leading members of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), the Atlas of Virus Diagrams includes chapters on virus classification. The diagrams, selected for content and historic and aesthetic value, illustrate vertebrate, invertebrate, and plant bacterial viruses taken from English, French, and German language virological literature. The book presents this information in three sections:

Overviews, including vertebrate and plant viruses

Viruses with cubic and helical symmetry

Viruses with binary symmetry (tailed bacteriophages).