"The goal of this second edition remains unchanged from the first, namely to provide a self-contained, comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of optical microscopy, targeted to graduate and upper-level undergraduate students, and to researchers in the field in general. This second edition is more rigorous than the first, and its foundations are better solidified. This actually posed a problem. What I originally thought would entail some small revisions and the occasional addition of new material here and there turned into a wholesale revamping of the text from cover to cover, in order to maintain a relatively uniform level of rigor"--