Lewis I. Held, Jr.
Cambridge University Press, New York
2002, 460 pp.
Price: $119.00, Hardcover
ISBN: 0-521-58445-0

This book most certainly fulfills its promise as a comprehensive reference guide and is an exceptional accomplishment for one author. The 10 years from inception to printing does not surprise me. It is well written and has excellent black-and-white figures. I suspect that they will be copied frequently, and it would have been a good marketing strategy to have included a CD with the book to facilitate their extraction for teaching purposes.

The eight chapters (cell lineage vs. intercellular signaling, the bristle, bristle patterns, origin and growth of discs, the leg disc, the wing disc, the eye disc, and homeostasis) are followed by seven appendices, including a glossary of protein domains and additional commentaries on the figures. The index is thorough, and one cannot fault the 102 pages of references with 4,900 citations.

Imaginal Discs is for the true specialist, and so it did not provide me with the broad overview of imaginal disc biology that I hoped for; however, for the thousands of researchers working with Drosophila melanogaster, this seems like a book that should be on the shelf, ready to hand. Considering it is a hardcover and given the wealth of information that it contains, at just under $120, it seems like good value for the money.

Stephen Higgs
Department of Pathology
University of Texas Medical Branch
Galveston, TX
American Entomologist
Vol. 49, No.3, Fall 2003

 American Entomology
Vol. 53, No. 3, Fall 2007