4. More Sources

Sompayrac's text presents an overview of immunology. It's a good first read. But I knew that I'll eventually need something more substantial, with more details. "Molecular Biology of the Cell" (previously mentioned) has a chapter on the subject and provides a more in depth view of the field, but it's a little out of date (2015).  The book I settled on is the ninth edition of "Cellular and Molecular Immunology". It's a paperback with three authors, Abul Abbas, Andrew Lichtman, and Shiv Pillai. This last edition has a copyright date of 2018, but was available on Amazon in June, 2017. I've perused the first two chapters. I found it readable with adequate illustrations and diagrams. Its been well reviewed and appears to be one of two standard textbooks for medical and graduate students who study immunology. In subsequent posts, I'll refer to the book as "Abbas et al".

There were a few alternatives. Abbas et al's main competitor appears to be a tome called "Janeway's Immunobiology" by Kenneth Murphy and Casey Weaver. Also in its ninth edition, it's a year older, a hair less well reviewed, and a bit more expensive than I cared for. I opted for Abbas.

There are some free resources that I intend to make use of in addition to the books that I've noted so far. The fifth edition of the Janeway book has been made available by the publisher, Garland Press, on the National Institute of Health's National Center for Biotechnology Information website. It's lead author is Charles Janeway, one of the leading figures in the field of immunology. Janeway passed away in 2013, but, as I note above, newer editions still bear his name. Another excellent source material is Wikipedia. The articles under "innate immunity" and "adaptive immunity" are excellent short summaries of our present understanding.

OK. Enough of introductory stuff. Let's get on to what I've been learning while utilizing these resources.