Cellular and Molecular Immunology

I was very glad that my undergraduate course in Immunology chose this textbook, because it has all you need to know and more to understand Immunology. A lot of my classmates and I found the text to be hard to read due to the fact that the material is very detailed and condensed, but the book is very well-laid out and describes the immune system well despite the inherent complexities involved. You might have to work hard to tie things together, but that's just the nature of the material since it's so intertwined. All in all, my favorite textbook of my undergrad molecular biology curriculum so far.

Few books are illustrated this well, and while the book suffers from the absence of a glossary, it is incredibly well written, with sufficient detail that you are sure you are getting the full story. The author is not targeting me (a dilettante if ever there was one) but I find I can make my way through 99% of the book without questions or issues, and what I need help with I can find on the internet or by asking doctor friends. If you are truly interested in how the immune system works, in some detail, this is a wonderful book.

My only immunology background was in medical school in the early 80s. I bought this book to try to get a basic grasp on what immunology is about now, 20 years later. This book is excellent for that. As other reviewers have commented, the material is well organized and illustrated. The illustrations are numerous enough and detailed enough to almost form an outline in their own right. While there is considerable repetition, I consider that this is one of the best features of the book for a newcomer such as I. The repetition is clearly very intentional, not the result of disorganization or sloppy editing. Rather it is enough to let the reader grasp both the forest and the trees. It also lets you, to some extent, read from any section of the book without being totally lost if you don't remember the previous material.

This book was on our shelves in my HIV lab as a student in neuroscience. I spotted it and pulled it out, and as I worked for two and a half years in this lab while finishing my Masters dissertation I would come up with questions or things that had not been taught in my classes. This book explained all of it quite nicely, and I am sure the updated version is even better. There are enough pictures and graphs in this book to be helpful, but a lot of the information cannot be provided in pictorial format. Too many times in this field authors write for their peers, and not for students or for understanding. This is not the case with this book. It is immensely accessible, and provides useful descriptions of both normal cellular activities and what happens when disease hits, or autoimmunity causes problems with the body's own defenses. It was extremely helpful in allowing me to answer the questions of my dissertation committee, and I recommend it to others who are working in various labs or have textbooks that are poorly written. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh

This immunology textbook has been what many bioloy students are waiting for. Among other well-known texts, this book is the thinest. However, the materails contained are so comprehensive that it can be used as a regular textbook. There are not many illustrations in this book as you usually see in a typical immunology book but these group of authors have done a nice job describing many difficult topics ( such as immunoglobulin gene rearrangement, B and T cell maturation, complement, Hypersensitivity etc.) easier and clearer by using simple language. Moreover,this new edition has been updated with very recent knowledge of immunology. If you anyhow don't like Kuby or Janeways' books, this book can be another excellent one.