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Book Reviews W. W. Socha, J. Ruffié Blood Groups of Primates Theory, Practice, Evolutionary Meaning Monographs in Primatology, vol. 3 Liss, New York 1983 XXI + 282 pp.; E 43.-ISBN 0-8451-3402-7 60 years of research on blood groups of nonhuman primates produced well over 400 articles and short reports but, until recently, not a single, comprehensive book. Everyone who wanted to follow developments in that field would have had to peruse volumes of journals representing disciplines as disparate as, to mention a few, physical anthropology, veterinary medicine, hematology, immunology, primatology, obstetrics, evolution, blood transfusion and blood banking, biochemistry, molecular biology, human genetics, etc. Fortunately, the book by Socha and Ruffié has rendered this laborious task unnecessary. This single, condensed volume traces the progress in the knowledge and applications of red cell antigens of apes and monkeys from the early studies initiated in the 1920s by the father of the human blood groups, Karl Land-steiner, to the most recent findings. Addressed to a wide range of potential readers, among whom many may have only a vague idea of the world of monkeys, the book opens with three general chapters: on the place of primates in the animal kingdom, on taxonomy of nonhuman primates, and on the importance of primates for man and human research. Written in popular form these chapters may appear to experts as trivial and too anecdotic; the uninitiated, however, will undoubtedly read with interest this short and easy introduction into primatology. The fourth chapter describes the history of the discovery of blood groups of monkeys and shows how research in this field was inspired by major discoveries in human blood groups and by the increasing interest in immunologic polymorphisms of living organisms. Detailed discussion of blood groups of apes and monkeys, which fills the four central chapters of the book, is organized, basically, by blood group systems that span several large taxa of nonhuman primates. This approach emphasizes the comparative aspects of primate blood group research, but, by the same token, it causes certain bias in favor of species the closest to man on which the immunologic data are the most accessible. The fact that both authors are physicians with long-standing involvement in human blood group and blood transfusion research may also, to some extent, explain the anthropocentric bias of this book with some neglect of the species most remote from Homo sapiens, such as the New World monkeys or prosimians. Among the major blood group systems of man also known to occur in nonhuman primates, the A-B-O system is the most investigated. Genes capable of coding for transferases that ensure the presence of A, B and H substances, or very closely related substances, can be traced to the very early evolutionary forms, such as bacteria. Yet, the establishment of an allelic relationship among A, B, O genes does not occur until the simian stage, namely, first at the level of the Plat-yrrhini. In both New and Old World monkeys, as well as in most of anthropoid apes, a monomorphic regulatory gene Se assures regular presence of the A, B and H substances in tissues and body secretions. Only in rare orangutans and in 20 % of human