Abstract
This book is the first in a series of monographs in Biology of Animal Infections. Marek's Disease: An Evolving Problem is a compilation of 13 reviews, an introduction and a conclusion chapter on Marek's disease; all written by international experts on Marek's disease. A list of contributors, abbreviations, and subject index are also provided. The collection of reviews summarizes current knowledge on the pathogenesis, biology and life cycle, molecular mechanisms of transformation, control strategies, and diagnosis of Marek's disease. The book also contains chapters on the history of evolution of Marek's disease and current worldwide perspective in commercial poultry. The table of contents with headings and subheadings make the text easy to navigate. The individual chapters seem to be well coordinated, referring each other without much overlap.
The pictures are of good quality and supportive of the text. However, color plates would have been better served in the corresponding chapters instead of being combined in the middle of the book without indicating to which chapter they belong.
This book is well suited for both pathologists and microbiologists who want to have a general overview of the complexities of Marek's disease. This book follows another monograph on Marek's disease published 4 years earlier and covering similar areas. However, new advances in both Marek's disease virus and chicken genomics, with the genomes of both organisms now fully sequenced, makes the chapters addressing molecular biology of Marek's disease more current.