This is a collection of eleven chapters written by sixteen contributors and organized into three sections. The first section reviews the biology, origin, and function of astrocytes. The second describes the role of astrocytes in neurological degenerative conditions and diseases, including aging, Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, prion diseases, and some other relatively rare disorders. The last section has a somewhat misleading title, "Experimental Models of Astrocyte Senescence," while in fact it mostly focuses on the pathology of astrocytic degeneration. The purpose is to consolidate information concerning the role of astroglia in brain aging and disease. According to the author, the audience consists of basic neuroscientists and clinically-oriented investigators. The first section might be informative for a reader with general interest in neuroscience; the rest requires a profound background in the corresponding field and is very difficult to read because of the lack of a list of abbreviations. Overall, a wide spectrum of ideas and experimental facts related to the role of astroglia in brain deterioration is presented. This book is illustrated by high-quality black-and-white photographs and schemes and has two-color plates that are designed and captioned awkwardly, which makes them difficult to use. It has a brief subject index of very little value and is wanting for a glossary and a list of abbreviations. The number of references is excessive and sometimes reaches caricature proportions when the list of quoted works is longer than the text of a chapter. Some of the introductory chapters are useful as an overview of this issue, while others are rather narrow in focusand require profound knowledge of the field. This volume can be used to familiarize the reader with this rather controversial field and to find experimental support for existing hypotheses. It addresses and extremely important problem, but fall short of the author's goals.
