This is a monumental book, which reviews and discuss over 3,000 scientific publications on mechanisms of aging and longevity, with special emphasis on the role of inflammation in senescence and age-related degenerative diseases. The author is an internationally recognized leader in the field of biogerontology, and his volume could serve as a useful reference book for a wide readership including biomedical scientists, biogerontologists and clinicians in areas of vascular disease, diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, genetics of aging and longevity, animal models of aging, anthropology and primatology, evolutionary biology, demography and epidemiology.This volume is not a particularly easy reading, because of the complexity of the study topic with mixed and sometimes even controversial research findings, making it difficult to reach general conclusions. Fortunately the book is well illustrated with numerous tables and pictures (136 illustrations), which makes it much easier to follow.The book starts with a discussion of the role of inflammation and oxidation in aging and chronic diseases (chapter 1) including an overview of experimental models for aging studies, description of inflammation process, as well as four types of damage (free radical damage, glyco-oxidation, chronic proliferation, and mechanical bystander effects). This chapter also discuses arterial aging and atherosclerosis, Alzheimer disease and vascular-related dementias, inflammation in obesity, and the processes of normal aging in the absence of specific diseases. The author makes a conclusion that in most chronic diseases of aging, the oxidative stress and inflammation are prominent; moreover, inflammatory changes are observed in many aging tissues even without specific pathology.

    Other topics discussed in this book include the role of infections, inflammogens, and drugs in aging process (chapter 2); energy balance, inflammation, and aging (chapter 3); the role of nutrition and infection in the developmental influences on aging (chapter 4); genetics of aging and longevity (chapter 5); evolution of human life span with forecasts for the future (chapter 6). In my opinion the most interesting part of this book is chapter 4, where the author provides an excellent overview of the Barker hypothesis of fetal origins of adult disease, and expands this hypothesis further to consider the role of early-life infections and inflammation in aging process later in life.